


Shake The Yoke Of Inauspicious Stars

by thelilacfield



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Dark Magic, F/M, Fate & Destiny, First Love, Puritan Times
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-05-23 20:43:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: Sometimes, fate will take a particular interest in two souls. Souls with stronger connections than others, with stories spooling out in front of them that carry the potential to be alight with joy or weighted with tragedy. They will be afforded opportunities to meet, for the paths behind them to finally meet at the centre and for a new story to begin.A man and a woman, orphans in the new world, living lives on different sides of the coin. A witch and the town judge's apprentice. Fated to meet. Fated to fall for each other. Fated to find themselves tangling with destiny.





	1. as long as you can have your chance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VisionOfScarlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VisionOfScarlet/gifts).



**A/N:** This fic is an AU set in 1600s Puritan American, and is meant as a gift for a friend, and as such is written in a different and darker style to many of my other fics. It carries with it a string of warnings, and please read them before diving in. If you choose to read, I hope you enjoy - and please leave me a little feedback telling me your thoughts! Title is a quote from  _Romeo and Juliet_.

 **Warnings:** emotional abuse, non-consensual sex with a minor, character death, forced sterilisation of a minor, suicidal thoughts

* * *

Fate is a fickle friend.

It might fill the air with a promise, two people colliding on a street corner and forever in the way their eyes meet. But it might turn its favour as fast as the tides, dooming a life into an endless series of tragedies.

A kind of magic, not bound by the laws of man. Without bias, changing loyalties at a moment's notice. To displease fate is to curse oneself to misery.

Roads are carved through history, overlapping and twisting back on themselves, guiding souls fated to join to the same spots. A man is killed in the English civil war, and his widow takes their son and boards a boat to the new world, hoping to find a place far away from the devastation to raise her child. Her death of consumption two years later will send her son into the orphanage, where his blue eyes and manners will charm the beautiful new wife of the town judge, eager to begin her own family and filling the time until the blessing of a pregnancy with voluntary work around orphans.

The town is abuzz with gossip the day a thrilled Anthony Stark announces his wife is expecting, but a hush falls over the crowds months later, only whispers lifting the wind. A death in the night, complications during childbirth, a familiar tale. Anthony walking through the town like a ghost, drifting to the orphanage to collect a few of his wife's belongings left there, her life scattered across town and ended too soon.

A child in the orphanage catches his eye, patiently explaining something to a younger orphan, and the attending woman smiles slightly, sadness shimmering in her eyes. "Mrs Stark also found Victor rather charming," she says, voice soft in acknowledgement of his mourning. "He is a lovely boy, very sweet. Mother died of consumption last year, his father was nowhere to be found."

The boy moves past them, looking curiously up at Anthony. "You're the town judge," he says, and there's wonder in his voice. "Mr. Stark. I know your wife."

"Knew, Victor, you knew her," the nurse says, and sadness flashes through Victor's eyes that catches on Anthony's heart. "Mrs Stark sadly passed away last night."

"I am very sorry for your loss, Mr. Stark," Victor says solemnly, and chases after another child, and Anthony gazes after him.

"Mr. Stark, I've heard tell that you're looking for an apprentice," the nurse says, a spark of hope in her tone, and Anthony nods vaguely. "We have many children here approaching the age where they will have to be placed into apprenticeships if we don't want them to go back to the streets. I have a particular boy I believe would serve well as your apprentice, intelligent and industrious. If you'll just follow me-"

A gentle tug on Anthony's shirt makes him turn back, to the same boy, blinking innocent blue eyes up at him and holding out a flower. A daisy, perfect, the petals very white and the centre as yellow as the sun, a hopeful smile on the boy's face. "Don't be sad," he says, very quietly. "This is for you. "

"Victor, we talked about this," the nurse says, her pleasant expression creasing into a frown at the boy, who bows his head in embarrassment. "Put that away."

"No!" Anthony snaps abruptly, cutting across her, and takes the daisy from the boy's hand, tucking it carefully into his collar. "Thank you, Victor."

"You're welcome!" he says brightly, and the pure innocent joy in his smile stays lingering in Tony's mind even after the boy has run off.

"I'm looking for an apprentice," Anthony says thoughtfully, eyes on the child smiling at a younger girl and disappearing into the garden, and turns to the nurse. "Do you think..."

Victor Shade, rising seven years old, is moved into the judge's home less than a week later, prepared to apprentice him, learn the trade. Yet Anthony treats him as a son more than anything else, and though to the public he is only an apprentice both men know in their hearts that he has become Victor Stark.

As the boy is beginning to court, taking the daughter of a local farmer out on the weekends and setting her parents to hope for such an advantageous marriage as the judge's apprentice, a family in the little-known country of Sokovia watch their crops inexplicably fail for the second year in a row. With their twin children starving, husband and wife choose to run, sacrificing what little food they have to the hungry mouths of their son and daughter. Both parents succumb to disease on the long, cramped boat journey, leaving their children to the wilderness of an unfamiliar town. Exposed and alone, waiting for the wrong person to take them.

Fate works its trickery to bring souls together. Death, destruction, none of that is considered when fate chooses to bring a relationship together. Victor Shade finds a home with Anthony Stark, but his heart doesn't stir when the farmer's daughter kisses him. No, he's waiting for someone else, fate whispering to him in dreams.

Wanda Maximoff sleeps on the streets, next to her brother. She is too young to yet know of love and fate and souls, but fate has already created a path for her. Meant to bring her to Victor's side. Through any means necessary.

Two orphans, brought to the same country far from where either of them were born, where the woods are shadows and darkness and the streets are grey and lined with picturesque houses. Living lives so similar, but so separated they may as well be worlds apart. Their futures inevitably intertwined.

Yes, fate is a fickle friend.

* * *

Fate twines through the world, and there are those who will try to fight it. With magic, and chaos, and swirling darkness. Resisting the pull of destiny, playing with the fabric of reality. And that was once too much, and the order of those who learned magic resigned certain spells to memory alone, or hid the ancient scrolls holding their power away, passed from master to apprentice, always knowing that certain parts of the world were not to be messed with.

But there were always those who sought to protect the magic that had once given individuals power enough to terrify innocent towns. A scroll written out, hidden away in lockets that passed down through generations of sorceresses, always waiting for the person who would be next to hold its secrets. Young women pulled from the fringes of society into the embrace of chaos.

No one worries when orphans run towards the woods in between towns, leaping through branches and splashing mud up their legs and scratching their arms climbing trees. Just turned eleven years old, somehow muddling through the days with her parents dead, Wanda watches her brother scrambling higher and higher, dirt caught in his hair and smearing his skin, almost disappearing among the dense green of the leaves. "C'mon!" he calls down from his perch, and scoffs when she shies away. "You can do it, Wanda! Then we can see everything!"

So small, skinny and shy, long dark hair tangled from sleeping on the streets, Wanda grips the tree tightly, bark flaking off beneath her nails, trying to climb even as her brother continues to ascend, the branches growing more and more spindly, less likely to support their weight. "Pietro!" she calls upwards, voice like a bird's cry on the wind, but he doesn't seem to hear her.

She speeds up, finding tiny knots in the wood to keep rising, the sun dappling glowing green through the leaves and shifting gold in her hair, giving her a look that from beneath might seem otherworldly, like something from a story. Skin as white and flawless as freshly-fallen snow, her hair so dark and her eyes as brightly emerald as the leaves surrounding her like a cloak. Fear flashing through those eyes when she hears rustling in the woods, and her flinch causes her to slip, her palms scraping against the rough bark as she tumbles downwards, the wind snatching her scream and impact with the ground knocking the breath out of her.

"Oh, my child, are you alright?!" The cry is frantic, and there are gentle hands pulling her upright, to look at a stranger, a woman who leans over her, sorrow in the set of her mouth when she notices a cut weaving across Wanda's hand, blood scarlet against her skin. "That was quite the fall, my dear. You must be more careful. What's your name, darling?"

"Wanda," she says, breathless and pained, watching the stranger rummage in her bag, amazed by the silky bright colours of her clothes, her hair piled up in an intricate style, jewels glowing at her neck and ears, a strange beauty in the woods. "Who are you?"

"I'm Agatha, little darling," she says gently, and pulls a small bottle from her bag. "This will help with that little cut and those bruises, but it will hurt. Can you be a good girl and not cry for me, Wanda?"

The solution in the bottle, the stopper glowing gold, is a deep bruised blue and stings when Agatha drips it onto Wanda's hand, but she grits her teeth tightly and doesn't cry. Not a single tear. She watches in wonder as the solution seeps into her skin, stitching it back together as if there was never a mark at all, and Agatha carefully uses the edge of a rag to wipe the blood from her hand and smiles gently, like a mother. For a child living with the death of both her parents, such warm attention is addicting. "You're very good," Agatha says, tucking the bottle back into her bag. "Where do you have bruises, darling?"

Another bottle, another solution in a deep purple, and the bruises disappear, fading from a darkening shadow on her skin into flawless white. "Are you a witch?" Wanda asks, an eyebrow arched, with all the worldly knowledge of a child, and Agatha smiles.

"I use healing magic," she says. "Does that scare you, Wanda?"

"No," she says stubbornly, jutting her chin out. "I'm brave. There was a witch on our street at home. She found our cat once when it ran away, and it had lost an ear, and she grew a new one. Magic can help people."

"That's right, little darling, it can," Agatha says, and the praise and the warmth in her eyes is intoxicating to a lonely child. "I want to give you something for being such a brave girl." An apple in her hands, red and polished and perfect, and Wanda is staring wide-eyed, her stomach grumbling in a reminder that she's barely eaten for days.

"Wanda?!" Pietro calling for her distracts her, and Agatha is pressing the apple into her hands, warmth in her eyes. The first gift, before she disappears into the woods, and Pietro drags Wanda back into town before night falls, insisting, "The woods are dangerous, Wanda, you never know what could be out there, we have to be safe."

An apple one week, shiny and perfect. Bread the next, a freshly-baked loaf that sustains the young twins through a few days, though Pietro rolls his eyes when his sister tells him the gifts are from the kind woman in the woods. A potion in a vial of frosted glass, that replaces the sleep Wanda is losing to staying up at night watching for anyone who might hurt her. New ribbon, a green that matches her eyes, and when the satin is woven through her hair it becomes evident that she is a pretty child, and will grow into a beautiful woman.

Pietro grows more suspicious the more days Wanda sneaks away to the woods, as the days they've spent living on the streets build up into months and weeks and a year, when they turn twelve and she returns from the woods with a bracelet at her wrist, a deep red stone set into fragile gold, running her fingers over the links in wonder. Resentment builds up, raw and red and dangerous, for every time that Wanda disappears into the trees for hours, returning smiling and soft and happy, talking of magic and mysterious women and the kindness of strangers. He has always protected his sister, and suddenly she doesn't need him.

He follows her, watches her walk into the deepest shadows of the trees, and jumps from the tree he's perched in when he sees his sister, his innocent sweet younger sister, glowing red at her fingertips, her eyes flickering crimson, sealing a shallow cut on her arm, weeping teardrops of blood onto her pristine new clothes. "What are you  _doing_?" he spits, anger sharpening his words, and she starts, losing concentration and returning her eyes to normal.

"I was doing so well!" she snaps with the petulance of a child, blood running in shining rivulets over her wrist. "I thought you didn't like the woods!"

"I followed you," he says, and her eyes flash in fury. "I had to know what you were doing! This is  _dangerous_!"

"I'm practicing," she says, and there's a soft smile on her lips. "I'm going to be Agatha's apprentice, Pietro! I'm going to learn  _magic_. Then we can be fine, don't you see? We won't want for anything ever again."

"She's not real, Wanda, don't be silly," he snaps. "She's a crook and she's made you believe she's something more. You're tangling with something you don't understand, you're too young to know about the world. Magic is dark, Father always told us that. You can't trust anyone who claims to practice it."

"Agatha is trustworthy!" Wanda insists, and he snorts derisively. "She  _is_! She sees potential in me, she's going to teach me everything she knows, and then I can help people, I can help  _us_ , we'll be happy!"

"Do you hear yourself, Wanda?" Pietro shouts, and she bristles indignantly. "You're delusional! Magic is dangerous, and it's mostly illusion anyway, and you've been conned by someone taking advantage of how naive you are about the real world!"

"I'm  _not_  naive!" she shrieks, and shoves him. Hard. With the force of anger behind it, and the burgeoning power growing bright in her blood squirming to the surface. Not noticing the rock placed just right for her brother's head to strike it hard enough that a sickening crack echoes through the air, and she screams, stumbling to her knees beside him.

Blood streaks her hands when she lifts his head into her lap, staining her skin and her clothes, leaving a smear of scarlet on her face as she frantically tries to wipe away the horrified tears spilling down her cheeks. She's watching the life draining from her brother, forcing audible sobs from her chest, scrambling desperately to take his hand, murmuring a constant stream of apologies, and promising, "She'll be here, she can help you, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm  _sorry_..."

Agatha emerges from the shadows onto the scene, Wanda crouched over her dying brother, blood on her hands and face and clothes, Pietro's breathing a rattle in his chest. "Oh, my little darling, what happened?" she asks, sweeping down to comfort the crying child.

"I d-didn't  _mean_  to," she chokes out. "I was just so  _angry_ , I just wanted to scare him, he wasn't supposed to fall, I didn't see the rock, please help me." She blinks up, her eyelashes dark and spiky with tears, and pleads, "Do something. There must be a spell."

"I'm so sorry, my darling, there's nothing to be done for him," Agatha says, and Wanda crumples, sobbing passionately into the silence, Pietro's breathing slowing, the shine of his eyes dulling. "There's no spell that can save him now. I cannot reverse blood loss."

"Wanda..." Barely a breath, so quiet it's almost imperceptible, and Pietro lets out a shuddering gasp and dies. Agatha clutches at Wanda as she sobs, just a child, covered in her brother's blood, fingers grasping at him.

"Please do something," she begs, turning her tear-streaked face to Agatha, hectic red laced through her skin and her eyes swollen with crying. " _Please_."

"There's no magic that can raise the dead, little darling," Agatha says, and Wanda curls into her, sobbing and shaking. "Come with me, little one. I will bury him, I promise. You will be safe with me."

Agatha is kind and understanding, a maternal figure for a girl who has lost everything she has ever loved. Plying Wanda with little presents, new clothes and ribbons for her hair and food considered a luxury, as the young girl who came into her apprenticeship becomes a teenager, and it becomes even more evident that yes, she will be a stunningly beautiful woman. Teaching her about the magic that lingers in the cracks in reality, how to manipulate the world to her whim, setting her to making the most basic of healing potions, infusing them with a magic that will please the clients who come to the house in the middle of the forest, looking for health and happiness.

The shadows don't creep in. Not at first. Calling it happiness would be too much, but Wanda finds a sort of quiet contentment in the neat wooden house with plants climbing up the walls and over the roof, picking herbs and tending to livestock and learning at the feet of her mistress. She is at peace, watching the flowers she planted over Pietro's grave lifting bright faces to the sun as the months pass, and she learns more, tends to smaller clients herself, healing wounds and fading bruises and stitching broken hearts back together.

But darkness will always reveal itself. And she sees it, sees the people with tightly gritted jaws who only appear at the door in the dead of night, taking away things she doesn't understand, magic she hasn't yet been taught. Danger crackling in the air, and Wanda hides herself away, watching men with steady hands and darting eyes allowing Agatha to carve into their skin with the point of a marble-handled knife, trading blood for what she sends them away with. Black magic.

Cross-legged on the floor, hair falling forward in a curtain around her face as she stirs at a pot of the solution meant to heal bruises, the first time she tended to the herbs herself and has been completely independent in creating something magical, Wanda glances up when Agatha slams the door out to the back of the house. "I have something for you, my little darling," she says, and Wanda smiles softly when she's presented with a bolt of silk, deep red shot through with sparks of gold, sewn into a dress. "And this." A frosted glass vial with a black stopper, the potion inside red as the dress. "Drink that, dear, and go wash in the river. Tonight will be special."

The night is warm, summer still lingering in the autumn, but the water is cold, a shock on Wanda's skin as she cleans herself, swims to the deepest part of the river and wets her hair. The scent of herbs clings to her, a part of her, something that signals she belongs in this world of magic and mystery. Up to her shoulders in the dark water, she unstoppers the vial and drinks its contents in a single swallow, an odd bitter taste at the back of her throat threatening to make her retch.

Agony grabs at her, concentrated in her stomach, so intense that she nearly slips beneath the water, but it passes quickly. Just like all magic, there is a short price to be paid in discomfort. Climbing out of the water, hair dripping wet and too long down her back, she clutches her ragged clothes, too tight over her breasts now, closely around her to dry herself. She pads barefoot over the soft carpet of leaves through the familiar trees back to the bungalow, finding Agatha waiting for her, the dress lain over the back of a chair. "What was that potion?" she asks, and Agatha turns to her with a gentle smile.

"Something to guarantee your future," she says, and the cryptic way of talking is simply what Wanda has come to know her mistress will do. "Try your dress on, my darling. I hope you like it."

In the candlelight, Wanda looks at herself for the first time, and doesn't see a child. At fourteen, she sees a woman, the red against her white skin and dark hair bewitching, her eyes dark in the flicker of fire. "I always knew you would blossom into a beauty," Agatha says, and a flush creeps into Wanda's cheeks. "I'll let you get back to your brew, little darling. We're expecting company."

The man who arrives as the moon rises, swollen pale in the night sky, has wild eyes and shaking hands, taking the seat Agatha keeps for clients and flickering his gaze to Wanda, something crawling in the way he smiles that makes her crouch lower over her pot, stoking the fire and letting her hair fall forward to hide her face. "I understand you've come looking for something a little more than a balm to ease a headache," Agatha says, sitting at her table with black silk wrapped around her, hair piled up, every inch a witch, her eyes flickering with flares of golden magic.

"My wife is having an affair," the stranger says, voice undercut with a current of barely-restrained anger, danger lurking on the air. "I want her and the idiot boy gone."

"Well, sir, I am running a reputable business here, I can't have my name tied to two gruesome murders," Agatha says, the gold of her jewellery luminous in the candlelight. "I have poisons that would be untraceable, of course. It would appear an unfortunate accident, taken by illness overnight. Or portrayed as a tragic suicide. But I will require your discretion."

"You already charge a high price, witch, and you also ask for discretion?" he snaps, and Wanda leans further forward to hide herself, the harshness of his voice making her want to shrink away, slink into the shadows and disappear.

"My dear, you have a problem, and I can solve it," Agatha says, seemingly unafraid of this man. "I will give you enough poison to kill two adults very easily, in a way that cannot be traced back to you. And in exchange for your discretion, you can fuck my apprentice."

Wanda looks up sharply to the stranger gazing at her hungrily, and dread pools in her gut, cold and cloying. "A fair trade," he says, and she shrinks in her dress, aware of where the material pulls tight against her skin, how low the neckline is, his eyes horrible and hot on her. "And where might I take this young beauty?"

"Then we have a deal," Agatha says, despite the plea in Wanda's eyes. "You'll find a bed through that door."

The stranger leaves the room, and Wanda's eyes are burning with tears, Agatha looking at her without sympathy. "Please," she breathes, though it seems to fall on deaf ears. "I  _can't_."

"I know how brave you are, Wanda," Agatha says softly, tugging her to her feet and pulling her hair over her shoulders, adjusting her dress to make the neckline indecent, the silk clinging to the new young curves of her body. "Can you be a good, brave girl for me? I need you to do this. To keep both of us safe."

"Will it hurt?" she asks, and Agatha's silence is all the answer she needs.

"I will heal you afterwards, whatever he does to you," she says. "You must let him use you how he wants, my darling. It's the only one to keep the darker side of what we do a secret. We will be in terrible danger if people find out, do you understand me?"

"I understand," Wanda says, her voice dull and resigned to her fate. Resigned to crossing the room and slinking into her dark bedroom, hearing the stranger's breathing grow heavier as she lies back on the bed and hitches her skirt up around her hips, the silk whispering beneath the heavy, clumsy hands touching her. Closing her eyes against everything, squeezing them so tight she sees light behind her eyelids, shifting blue blocking out the world.

But it can't block the pain. The tearing agony, the metallic taste of blood in her mouth when she tears her lip trying not to cry out, hands clenched into tight fists, forced to listen to the stranger's breathing growing faster, his grunts of pleasure while she is still and scared and her soul is turning to shadow. Trapped in herself, beneath the weight of a man using her, traded like currency, just another part of the transaction.

After he is done, climbing off her and closing the door behind him, his rough voice echoing through from the main room, she stays still on the bed, tears squeezing out from beneath her tightly closed eyelids, sobs catching in her chest. She's empty, shattered, broken, betrayed by the one person she thought she could trust. In agony and alone, something she thought was special snatched away from her, by a perfect stranger. Never kissed, never looked at with love, and her innocence taken from her.

The front door slams, and Agatha walks into the room, shielding the flame of a candle with one hand and setting it on a table, approaching Wanda with a wet rag in one hand, carefully and delicately wiping away the blood staining her thighs, a mask of sympathy softening her face. "You were so brave," she says. "You did so well. We have a satisfied customer, and a promise that he will be discreet. You make me so proud, Wanda."

Sitting up straight, wanting to crawl out of her own skin, scratch herself to pieces, tear the dress she so recently thought was beautiful to ribbons, Wanda's mouth twists at the sudden warmth between her legs, looking up at Agatha preparing a solution for the bruises bitten into her thighs and hips by rough fingertips, wishing there was a potion to heal the raw, aching wound on her soul. A sudden thought, terrifying, and her voice is high-pitched with fear and the effort of holding back the tears she won't let Agatha see her cry when she asks, "Will I have a baby?"

"Oh no, my darling, I took care of that," Agatha says, and Wanda almost unthinkingly puts a hand over her stomach, remembering the potion, the agony that took her for a moment. "That potion I made you, the red one? You will never have to worry about bearing a child."

"Ever?" Wanda asks, and Agatha nods. "Oh...that's a good thing. Isn't it?"

"Of course," Agatha says, stroking her hair in a soothingly maternal gesture. "We wouldn't want you in those circumstances. It's too dangerous to bear a child, our world is not made for babies." With a gentle smile, she says, "Change out of your dress, dear. You must be ready for bed."

Sleep will never come easily for Wanda again, always going back to that night. A terrible trilogy of heartbreaking events that sink into her soul, break her apart, destroy her childhood and turn her innocence to ash. Her body traded for secrecy, the phantom weight of a body she doesn't know on top of her every night when she tries to sleep. Any chance of having a child, one day far in the future when her life is different and bright and beautiful, torn away from her before she ever wondered on whether she wanted to be a mother. And the worst realisation, the most heartbreaking one, is that Agatha doesn't care about her. For the girl who lost her parents, lost her brother, having a maternal figure made all the difference to her fragile mind, offering her a sort of warmth.

Now, she is cold. She drifts through the days like a spirit, continuing to learn of magic and the world around her, but hollow with sadness. With what was taken from her. When Agatha sends other men to her bedroom, trading her for their silence, it hurts every time. Another part of her withers to dust, her hope disappearing into the ether with every day that passes. Somehow she's sure that this is her life, and she may never escape.

And yet, she won't leave. Despite the constant feeling that she's trapped, she's tied to Agatha. Without her, she would've been left to the mercy of the streets. She might have starved, fading away day by day in agony until there was nothing left of her but a vague imprint on the history of the world. Disease could've taken her from the world, the way it took her parents. Anything could have happened. Surely it's better to be alive than to be dead.

But is misery better than oblivion?

* * *

A year passes, crops grow and wither, Wanda grows a little taller and her body changes, becomes curvier, and the men Agatha trades spells with gaze at her with open hunger. Agatha never mentions to any of them that Wanda is only fifteen, and more men take her to bed, use her, and she breaks a little more with every single one. Her soul must barely be a wisp within her now, if it still exists. Grey and misty and almost faded entirely from her.

One with sound logic might ask why she doesn't simply leave. She wonders on that many nights, sitting in bed silent and unable to sleep, watching the shift of the trees in the wind. Anyone with an ounce of bravery in their hearts would have run a long time ago. She should have left the first night Agatha offered her up to a stranger, tricked her into drinking that potion that will make sure she can never have a child, forced her to give up her innocence.

But she can't leave. Agatha tends to her after each man, when the door swings closed behind them, and she is so gentle, sympathy in every expression and word. She's gentle, an arm around Wanda's shoulders, murmuring praise as she gently brushes Wanda's shiny, dark sheet of hair, promising another spell taught tomorrow. And she's never broken that promise, teaching Wanda more of the world that surrounds them. She makes most potions unsupervised now, deals with clients who come looking to be healed, weaves her magic red to close wounds and soothe aches.

For all her faults, Agatha is kind to her. She keeps a roof over her head, teaches her how to control the world and turn it to her whims, lets her tend to the animals as if she understands that Wanda needs companionship that Agatha can't offer, being too busy with her clients. When the clients leave and they're the only ones in the house, it feels like family. Agatha dresses Wanda in silks like hers, calls her beautiful, styles her hair and Wanda sees a witch in the mirror, the woman she will become in a few years when she's old enough and experienced enough to strike out on her own. Agatha has never said she'll keep Wanda with her as an apprentice once she's experienced enough to own her own business.

"When will I be ready?" she asks one night, when Agatha is packing potions into trunks, carefully lining the vials up between layers of silk to protect them. "What are you doing?"

"We must leave," Agatha says. "The town grows too suspicious. I know of another town at the other end of these woods, where they will not know of our reputation, and there are no witches already in residence. We can be there by morning."

"But...but my brother," Wanda says, and Agatha gazes at her like the thought had never even occurred. "He's buried  _here_. We can't take him."

"Of course not," Agatha says dismissively, and the way it hurts may as well be a dagger thrust to Wanda's heart. "He must stay."

"But he's my  _brother_ ," she says, and there are tears in her eyes, choking her, and she's fighting to keep them hidden. She doesn't cry in front of Agatha. Tears make her weak, Agatha says witches must control their emotions. She will not be weak. She  _can't_  be. "He's my family."

"I'm sure I don't need to remind you, little darling, that you are the reason he's buried," Agatha says, and Wanda clenches in on herself, remembering the horror of her hands dripping red with Pietro's blood, watching him die, the light leave his eyes. It's been three years, but every moment is still fresh in her mind.

"I didn't  _mean_  to," she insists, and Agatha simply gazes at her with pity. "I just pushed him. I didn't know the rock was there."

"Of course you didn't, darling," Agatha says, smoothing a hand through her hair. "But it's simple facts. If you hadn't pushed him, he would still be alive. You  _murdered_  him, darling. You know that."

"But you've killed people too," Wanda says, looking up at her mentor. "You make these poisons with human blood that are meant for murder."

"No, darling, that's not murder," Agatha corrects her, as if she's just a child. She feels small, young beneath the gaze of her mentor, shrinking in on herself. "I offer the chance, the weapon, but I have never dealt the blow myself. If the town were to know what you did, well...you would be hanged for it, little darling." Gazing at Wanda with darkness swirling in her eyes, she says, "I kept your secret, Wanda. I made sure no one would ever know what happened to your brother. I could have let you hang."

"Then why didn't you?" Wanda asks, a spark of fire that still exists deep within her, and Agatha's eyes harden.

"I thought you had the potential to be powerful," she says. "But if you're going to join generations of witches, you must understand that sentimentality has no place in our world. If you are going to survive, you must let go of all attachments. Your brother is nothing but dust and bones now."

"But he was my family," Wanda says softly. "Didn't you ever care for your family?"

"I let go of them when I was offered the chance to learn magic," Agatha says coolly. "You ought to learn to let go. Until you can detach your emotions from your magic, you will always be weak. You'll never be ready to run your own business."

"I'm going to say goodbye to him," Wanda says defiantly, and Agatha doesn't try to stop her. That's the oddest thing about their relationship, the terrible thing that keeps Wanda from simply leaving, like she imagines is logical. Agatha is kind to her, she never tries to stop her from going outside and having free will. She knows that she has to be careful, lest someone recognise her as a witch. She would never want to end up swinging from the town gallows.

The flowers over Pietro's grave are blooming bright, the wind lifting the trees and the river twisting past, the sound of it rushing over rocks soothing. Folding herself down cross-legged at her brother's grave, she lifts the delicate petals of the flowers, soft against her fingertips. "I miss you," she breathes, imagining the Pietro she knew, aching for adventure and protecting her every moment. She wanted to bring him into the life Agatha offered, have them both clothed in gifts and eating better than they ever would have dreamed as orphans on the streets, grow up with him at her side the way that was promised. Losing him severed her connection to her home country, her Sokovian accent almost dissipated now with three years as Agatha's apprentice, and she can't remember her parents' faces. Perhaps with him around she wouldn't forget her family.

Pietro had an idea for their future. They would find a way into apprenticeships for a farmer or a street merchant, begin to earn their keep, and they'd find somewhere to live and when they were both old enough they could begin courting. Whenever Wanda couldn't sleep for fear of what her future might hold, he told her soothing stories of a man she'd meet one day, who would kiss her hands and smile into her eyes and ask her to be his wife in the softest voice she'd ever heard. She clung to that fantasy.

But how could any such man want her now? A witch, a broken girl, with nothing to offer anyone who would be so kind to her. No one could fall in love with someone hollow like her, someone living beneath the veil of darkness that hides the terrible people of the world. Her life will be lived in the shadows, tied to Agatha inevitably, her magic making her eyes glow red and frightening anyone who might want to get close enough to bring light back to her life.

What future does she have now? Drifting away from Pietro's grave, she descends into the chill of the river, her skirts billowing around her, the cold almost welcoming. She spends so much of her life at the water's edge, cleansing herself of the fingerprints of strangers, trying to make herself clean enough to pretend it never happened. The whisper of the water is a familiar voice to her, the cool soothing against her skin, swirling through her soul to make her clean again.

But never clean enough. It's never enough, she will always be trapped in a body used by so many men who look at her with hungry eyes, her soul and her heart will always be locked in this casing. She can never escape who she has become, who Agatha has made her, this girl with scarlet magic swelling in her blood and a broken mind, clinging to the love of her mentor because it was her own fault that she lost everyone else. She was the child that grew the sickest when their crops died, the reason her parents decided to flee Sokovia for the promise of the new world, the reason they got so sick on the ship and succumbed to death. Agatha is right, she  _murdered_  Pietro, it was her fault he fell and struck that rock, if she had only controlled her emotions he would be alive.

Head spinning, she forces herself beneath the water to cleanse her mind of all this swirling darkness, her eyes tightly closed against the world, feeling the rush of the current pushing her body this way and that, so small against the power of nature. She could stay here forever, until the darkness takes her. Be next to Pietro, forget everything, take herself away from whatever terrible future might lie in front of her. She would see her family again, perhaps they wouldn't care what her life has led her to do, they would still love her.

Her lungs are burning, and she lifts her head with a desperate gasp for air, hair hanging in dark streams over her face, the cold cutting her down to the bone. She can't die. Not yet. When her parents were so sick she and Pietro couldn't get close to them, she remembers her father's eyes dull with disease as he pleaded with them to live long and happy lives in the new world. Pietro's opportunity to fulfil their father's final wish was taken from him. She has to live a long and happy life, for her family who never got to live theirs.

When she returns to the house, dripping wet and shivering, Agatha swoops on her, holding her close, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, murmuring, "My darling, you're so cold, what happened? Did you fall in the river? You must be more careful, I don't know what I would do without you. I love you, darling, you must remember that." As her mentor holds her close, her fingers digging into Wanda's sides, she makes the decision that she will live.

She will learn more, learn everything she can to become a witch who can help people. Force herself to detach her emotions from her magic so she can leave Agatha's side one day. In their new home, the wooden bungalow in a clearing where they can keep livestock, chickens and a soulful-eyed cow who Agatha leaves Wanda to take care of, she will do everything she can to craft a future for herself that doesn't seem so hopeless.

* * *

Sometimes, fate will take a particular interest in two souls. Souls with stronger connections than others, with stories spooling out in front of them that carry the potential to be alight with joy or weighted with tragedy. They will be afforded opportunities to meet, for the paths behind them to finally meet at the centre and for a new story to begin.

Victor has no idea that the woods at the edge of the town hide such terrible secrets. He sometimes wanders through the fringes, the dark trees closing over his head, a haven for the outsider he feels sometimes, an orphan lucky enough to find a family in Anthony Stark. Alone in the woods, he listens to the birdsong that drifts on the air, the distant babbling of a flowing river, and he finds a contentment in the quiet and the calm of nature.

Much of the townspeople talk of a witch, of course, but those who go to the mysterious figure for darker desires will never openly speak of them. He has only heard of magic as what healed Anthony's friends from broken bones and broken hearts, as something that can help bring a withering crop back to life, as something that hovers at the edge of the world, helping to bring luck to people. Victor doesn't know of the terrible price Wanda pays for being a part of that world. He doesn't know her. Not yet.

For him, his world is simple, a clear path laid out for him. He assists Anthony with his duties at the town judge, tries to block his emotions from interfering when people who are clearly guilty plead to escape time in jail with tears in their eyes, and courts another young woman. Another walk through the town holding hands, another gentle kiss at the end of the evening, another pair of bright eyes hoping for a proposal from the judge's apprentice. Yet there's no pull of adoration in Victor's heart.

"You're young, there's no reason to be worrying about this yet," Anthony says on the night Vision expresses this to his surrogate father, the fire in the grate warming the room as they both look over paperwork. "I certainly wasn't considering proposing marriage to anyone I courted when I was twenty-one. I was thirty before I met Pepper, and we courted for four years before I convinced her father to approve our marriage. You have years ahead of you, Victor. There's no sense in rushing into love."

"But I want to be in love, Tony," Victor says softly, a name only used between the two of them and the few friends Anthony trusts enough to let be around his son for extended periods of time. A number that only includes the town doctor, who has kept Victor healthy since Tony took him in, and his wife. "I've read the novels that hold these beautiful love stories. I want that for myself. But none of the women I've courted have made me believe our connection could be like that. I simply...I just want something magical."

"You'll find it," Tony says bracingly, flicking a messy signature over a confession. "It might take a few years, but you will find that connection with someone. There are so many women in this town who are eager to marry the judge's apprentice. I think you need a woman who loves you regardless of who you are."

"Will I ever find a woman like that?" Victor asks, and there's a soft melancholy sort of smile on Tony's face. "In this town, all I am is your apprentice. Any woman who would disregard that would have to be extraordinary."

"Pepper didn't love me because I'm a judge," Tony says, flickers of the past in his eyes, his mouth setting in a hard line for a moment to stave off the tears he still cries each time he thinks of his late wife, the child who died with her and the life they could've had. "She agreed to marry me because of who I am. Nothing else. Not my career or my money or my standing. Love is a powerful thing."

"I always dreamed of something greater than what I have," Victor says, face shadowed with brooding. "I want a love story like those in the stories. Something written in the stars."

"I pray you get it," Tony says, and sets a comforting hand on Victor's shoulder, warmth in his smile. "But, for the moment, you should continue courting the young woman who was smiling very proudly when I met her and her mother at the market earlier. Perhaps you just haven't recognised that you and her are written in the stars yet."

On his father's advice, and a craving for love that keeps him tossing and turning in the night when he should be sleeping soundly, Victor takes the same woman out again, her hand in his as they wander the streets, the sun high in the sky and the town alive with the summer festival. Street performers call out to them for money, and the woman on his arm tugs him along eagerly, the music filling the town square adding a buzz of excitement to the air.

Distracted watching a man juggling knives that gleam in the afternoon sun, Victor gets the breath knocked out of him by someone colliding with him, and immediately crouches to grab at the food bouncing over the cobblestones, a loaf of bread and shiny apples and neatly tied bunches of herbs. A small hand joins his scrabbling for the scattered belongings, very pale and delicate, and he looks up into a young, frightened face haloed by dark hair, green eyes refusing to meet his. "I'm very sorry for colliding with you, miss," he says, and still she won't look at him.

" _She_  should be the one apologising, Victor!" his date says, glaring at the girl. "How dare you crash into us? Don't you know who he is? You should be watching where you walk!"

Clasping her belongings to her chest, the girl scurries away and disappears into the crowds before Victor can apologise for his date's behaviour, knowing he will never take this woman out again, will end their courtship immediately. He can't marry someone who is rude to an utter stranger. Particularly not a girl with such frightened eyes.

She twines through his dreams, a pale wraith of a girl drifting through the woods, white against the dark trunks of the trees. The fear in her eyes stays with him through weeks and months, haunting every quiet moment of his life. He's intrigued by what her story might be, thinking of her like a character in one of the novels Tony leaves him to read by the flickering light of the fire every night. The dark-haired woman in the woods, small and scared.

Strange, isn't it. How easily intrigue can create the beginnings of a path to love.

* * *

The stranger on top of her lets out a long sigh, and climbs off her without performance, closing the door behind him. Wanda smooths her dress down around her thighs, a bitter taste at the back of her throat, and ceremoniously jerks the window behind her bed open to spit up bile onto the frost-hard ground, wiping a shaking hand across her mouth. Her body doesn't feel like hers, a vessel for someone else's enjoyment, fingerprints glazed across her skin, and for what? Just to ensure a man's silence when he comes asking for a way to fulfil his darkest desires, she has been made into a bartering tool. Just another part of the bargain, like she's a handful of coins or a drop of blood swirling into a potion.

"Little darling!" Agatha calls from the main room, and Wanda straightens her shoulders and stills her trembling fingers before she looks in on her mentor. "Would you go milk the cow while I finish with our customer?"

Snatching a shawl around her shoulders for the lingering winter cold, Wanda goes to the pen where their cow watches her surroundings serenely, smoothing a hand over her velvety brown fur. Hooking the stool over with her foot, setting the bucket in place, she rests her forehead against the cow's side as she milks her, the wind biting into her skin through her seductively thin silks. Only when she lifts her head does she see the cow's fur streaked with tears, and move her stool over to scratch between her ears, letting out a long shuddering breath.

"What do I do?" she asks softly, and the cow gazes at her with gentle brown eyes. "Agatha doesn't seem to see how unhappy I am. Or she doesn't care." Scuffing a bare foot over the ground, greying her skin, she says, "I don't know which is worse. I thought she would be kind to me. That I'd found someone who would protect me."

The cow's head moves closer to her, against her stomach, comforting, and tears bloom fresh in Wanda's eyes. It speaks on how lonely she is, that a show of affection from an animal means so much. "She says she loves me," she says, continuing to stroke the cow, absorbed in how smooth and soft her fur is. "But this isn't love." Tracing the neat shapes of the cow's ears, she says, "If she loved me, she would have stopped sending these men to me long ago. I'm eighteen now. I should be leaving her, but I don't know if she'll let me."

Giving a mournful sigh, the cow nudges at her as she stands and collects the pail of milk, the plants slowly pushing out of the winter ground brushing her feet on the walk back to the house. As she opens the door and sets the pail down, she finds their customer disappeared, and Agatha waiting at the table, her hair let down from the usual intricate style and the gold chain of a necklace wrapped around her fingers. "Wanda, darling, we have to talk," she says, gesturing to the chair opposite. "You are finally eighteen, and it was always my intention to only apprentice you until this moment."

"Oh." It's perhaps horrifying that Wanda is so surprised by her mentor's willingness to let her go, speaking volumes on how the last six years of her life have felt like she was trapped. "Then what will I do?"

"I have made arrangements to travel away from here, as far as I can get," Agatha says, and Wanda continues to blink at her in surprise. "This place will be your home, Wanda. You planted the garden, you take care of the animals, and when I'm gone you already have a base of clients from the town to help heal. Your magic is strong enough now that I trust you alone."

"You won't stay?" Wanda asks, a sudden melancholy overwhelming her at the thought that her mentor is going to leave her alone. For six years, Agatha has been all she's had, a semblance of a family. The thought of being alone after everything is terrifying.

"Two witches living in close proximity is too dangerous," Agatha says, the logical and simple answer. "If our community is to survive, we have to stay separated." There's warmth in her eyes as she gives Wanda a soft smile and says, "You're ready, little darling. These past six years have been a joy, watching you blossom into who you were meant to be."

"When will you leave?" Wanda asks, and Agatha laughs softly.

"So eager to see me go, darling?" she asks, and Wanda simply bites her lip. She can't decide if she is eager to see Agatha leave or not. To be free. "There is one last lesson I must teach you before I let you take over my place in this community."

Unwrapping the gold chain from between her fingers, she sets the locket Wanda has seen hanging around her neck in the centre of the table, opening it with a click of the tiny catch to a scrap of paper inside. Agatha reaches over the pull the scrap from its place, unfurling it to faded ink in swirling handwriting, a whisper of power even in the soft scuff of the paper. "I have taught you everything I know," she says, as Wanda stares at the paper, wondering what unspeakable power it might hold, so tempted to reach out and take it. "Except the few spells on this paper."

"And you're going to teach me them before you leave?" Wanda asks, and Agatha's expression darkens, her mouth set in a hard line.

"No," she says. "I will warn you about them. These spells are forbidden. Each of them is a terrible way to change the world, it grants far too much power to those who use them. The use of them was banned years ago, and ever since the only copies have existed in lockets like this, to remind us that we can never use them."

"What do they do?" Wanda asks curiously, reaching for the paper before Agatha pushes her hand away.

"Terrible things," she says darkly. "One can twist the mind of anyone you use it on, make them do your bidding. Another will leave someone in agonising pain, but conscious, never able to succumb to death. They are terrible, torturous spells, and they were banned when a member of our community went rogue and used them on the innocent people around her, getting herself caught and burned at the stake and beginning a hunt for our kind that still goes on today. For our own protection, we do not use these spells."

"I would never want to torture someone," Wanda says in horror. "Why are you telling me about these spells if they're forbidden?"

"We must know our limits," Agatha says, setting her hand over the paper. "If magic is limitless, the world would fall to chaos. We must maintain a semblance of order."

Squinting at the paper, slowly flattening out from the creases it's been in for years, a prickle runs down Wanda's spine as she notices the word  _death_ , swirling across the page. Shifting her chair closer to the table, adjusting the lamp that illuminates them with warm, flickering light, she reaches out under the guise of inspecting the locket, a simple gold oval large enough to hold the paper, and slides the paper out from Agatha's hand. Her eyes flicker over the curses, finding the words  _to raise one from the dead_  dark against the aged yellow of the paper, and anger surges in her blood, spiking hot through her chest and turning her eyes to red with rage.

"You said...you  _said_  there was no spell that can raise the dead," she says, and her voice is so low, and so sharp, she barely recognises it from how quiet she has become, soft and breakable. "When Pietro died. I  _begged_  you to save him, and you said you couldn't. So  _why_  does this spell say it can raise someone from the dead?"

"Wanda, little darling, just-"

"Don't call me your little darling," she says, rising from her seat, crackling with anger, so much of it it seems to overflow from her, her body too small and slender to contain such an elemental force as fury. "I was a  _child_ , crying over my brother's body, and you told me there was nothing you could do!"

"Wanda, this magic is forbidden for a reason," Agatha insists, and for once she looks small. Vulnerable. The way she's made Wanda feel every single day for the past six years, never allowing her to truly bloom by herself, thrusting strangers into her bed and insisting she spread her legs for them. "It's dark magic, it shifts the balance of the world. All magic comes at a price."

"My brother was  _dead_!" Wanda shrieks, the paper clenched in her fist. "You could have helped, and you didn't! Why?"

"I  _couldn't_ ," Agatha says, and she sounds broken, sad. It sends a vindictive thrill through Wanda, knowing there's regret, sadness. "It was too dangerous. Wanda, you must believe me, my intention was never for your brother to die. I would have taken him in too, at least until I found another place for him."

"No, no you wouldn't!" Wanda shouts, realisations catching up to her all at once, years of being manipulated all joining together to make her feel close to exploding with anger. "You wanted me alone, didn't you? Easy to manipulate. I was a  _child_! And you turned me into this, this  _broken_  person, you let those men do whatever they wanted to me and you insisted it was to keep us safe! How  _could_  you? I  _trusted_  you!"

"Wanda, little darling, I-"

"Get out," Wanda snaps, low and dangerous. "Get out, Agatha, and stay away until you have a suitable explanation for why you did to me, or I swear, I'll make you pay. You taught me everything you know, and I can make a dozen poisons that will kill you without a trace." As suddenly as the rage filled her, it fades, leaving her staggering, tears in her eyes, a single drop spilling silvery down her cheek. " _Please_ , leave. I don't want to hear another word until I can understand why you would spend six years telling me he was gone when all the time he could be brought back."

"Wanda, if I wanted to bring him back I would've done so immediately," Agatha says. "The dead must be raised as soon as possible after the time of death. It is years too late to bring him back now."

"Leave me  _alone_!" Wanda screams, and the door slams hard enough to make the flames in the candles flicker in the sudden breeze. Leaving the young woman, an eighteen year old who trusted the wrong person for six years, to slink to the floor and sob her hollow heart out as the night closes over her.

* * *

Seated at Tony's right hand, the courtroom quiet as they wait for the verdict, Victor gazes in sympathy at the young man on the centre of the room, wringing his hands, fear in his eyes, his knuckles white clutching the edges of his chair and his teeth chattering with nerves. The silence holds for a long moment, before Tony leans forward in his chair and gives the young man a comforting smile that has sustained Victor through many long and lonely nights in his twenty-three years.

"The death of the unnamed woman was a terrible tragedy, but not a premeditated murder," he says, and the young man sags in his chair in relief, Victor privately smiling to himself at the conclusion he was hoping for. "It was mere casualty against this man's will. I will not send a man to the gallows for causing an accident. You're free to go, Mr. Lang."

"Thank you thank you thank you," the young man says in a rush, standing from his chair, a young woman waiting anxiously at the door bursting into tears, making Victor's assumption that she is the young man's fiancé even stronger. "God be with you, Mr. Stark. You are too generous."

When the people have filed out, back into the balmy spring day, Victor stands and gives Tony a smile. "Thank you," he says, and Tony gives him a soft look. "I was worried for a moment that you would-"

"Send a man to his death for his horse hitting and killing a woman who ran out in front of him?" Tony asks, and shakes his head. "I've raised you since you were seven years old, Victor. I would hope you'd have a better opinion of me by now."

"Oh no, Master Stark, of course I have a wonderful opinion of you-"

"Don't worry yourself, I know you think of me as the greatest man in the country," Tony says with a wicked spark in his eye, and Victor returns his grin. "You better get home, I believe you have a date with the butcher's daughter tonight, and from what I've heard her mother is very eager to see her daughter on the arm of my apprentice."

Walking out of the courthouse and leaving Tony to finish tidying, Victor raises his head to the sun and is almost knocked to the ground by a girl crashing into him, her voice high and scared with frantic apologies. "I'm so sorry, sir, it's just so crowded, I can't see where I'm going."

"No, the fault was mine, miss," Victor says, straightening himself up. "You must not have known Mr. Lang's trial would conclude today, the whole town was out to see. Nasty business, everyone knew about that woman his horse hit last week."

"There was a death?" the girl asks, dusting herself down, and he's struck by the red of her dress in a town used to black and white, the way it clings to her slender body. "Who was she?"

"A stranger, no one could identify her," he says, and something stricken flashes across the girl's face. "Dark hair, clothed in silks, seemingly a woman of luxury. Odd that she would have run out in front of a horse and gotten herself killed."

The young woman gazes at the ground for a moment, and he notices more details. Her dark hair too long for her body, flowing shiny and smooth to her hips, barely restrained by a piece of green ribbon. The bracelet at her wrist, gold links holding a red stone. A necklace at her throat, a neat gold oval resting in the hollow of her neck, and when she looks around he sees the green of her eyes and it strikes a familiar chord in his chest. "Have we met before?" he asks, and she takes a step away from him. "Don't be frightened, please. We have met, haven't we? Two years ago."

"No," she says, and bolts down the street away from him, turning so fast that her bracelet flies from her thin wrist and falls to the cobblestones, flashing gold in the spring sun. Bending to pick it up, Victor runs after her, past blurred faces of people who call out greetings to him, towards the town limits and the dark forbidding leaves of the forest.

"Miss, wait, your bracelet!" he calls after her as the branches swipe at his shoulders, dew smearing over his clothes, but she doesn't stop running, and he can only keep track of where she is by the red of her dress against the trees. "Miss, slow down! I just want to give this back!"

He loses sight of her in the trees, and his foot catches on a rock and sends him stumbling into a river, the water soaking through his clothes and flooding into his mouth, and he rears up choking, coughing up mouthfuls of water, shivering as the cold bites into his skin. When he looks around wildly, the girl is gone. Heaving a sigh, he pulls himself out of the water and weaves back to the town, night falling around him, stumbling into his home and in front of the fire, shivering until sleep takes him, his breath rattling in the quiet.

The bracelet is still tangled around his fingers. Gold links holding everything together, the stone the same red Wanda's eyes flash when she performs magic. Something for him to hold the connection to her with.

Unbeknownst to either of them, a new story has begun.


	2. my wildest dreamings could not foresee

**A/N:** I was so delighted by the response to this! I hope you all enjoy this chapter - because it's the happiest one you're going to get!

 **Warnings:** character death, discussion of suicidal thoughts, discussion of rape

* * *

For a few days, Victor seems to himself and those around him entirely healthy. He complains of a slight pain in his chest, but thinks nothing more of it. The young lady he is courting looks at him in concern when he folds over at the end of a walk together, desperately short of breath, but he waves her worry away. He doesn't think on whether his fall in the river could have further complications.

Not until he is crouched in front of the fire, shivering even with the flames cheerfully crackling, and Tony is looking in on him, face drawn and nervous. "Are you alright?" he asks as Victor is wracked by a bout of violent coughing, and Victor just nods. "Are you sure?"

"Perfectly," Victor forces out between coughs, and straightens himself up, bringing his handkerchief to his mouth. Tony stares at him, sees a fleck of red against the white, and stands up immediately, snatching the handkerchief from Victor's hand and staring in horror at the blood. "I'm alright."

"You're not," Tony says, and he gazes at Victor in horror, sadness already composing itself into his expression. He has lost someone before, watched her grow pale in the weeks leading up to the birth of their child, seen bloodstains on white and bowed his head when he was told she was gone to God. And now he looks on the man he considers a son like he's already halfway to the grave. "I'm going to get the doctor."

"Tony, no, I'm perfectly healthy!" Victor insists, trying to get to his feet as Tony turns for the door, mouth set in a hard line of resignation. "Tony...I..." Almost the moment he is on his feet, his eyes roll back in his head and he crumples unconscious to the ground, and Tony's terrified murmurs for Victor to wake up hover on the air as night falls.

The town doctor is in the house in the first hours of the morning, sadness in his eyes as he watches Tony frantically try to dab the sweat away from Victor's face and neck, stoking the fire over and over again to try and keep him from shivering. Caught up in his own mind, burning up with fever and half-delirious, Victor doesn't notice the time passing, the increasingly hopelessness in Tony's eyes or the gentle sympathy in the town doctor's voice and expression.

"I can't lose him, Bruce...not him too. Not after Pepper. He's too important."

"I know, Tony, but there's nothing more I can do. You just have to keep him warm, keep him resting, make sure he's drinking and pray."

"He won't eat, Bruce. I try but he just keeps talking about some girl in the woods. Saying she was so afraid, and asking me if he should be scared too. He just shivers and sweats and gets sicker, I don't know what to  _do_."

"You're doing everything you can, Tony. We just have to hope he'll sweat the infection out."

"And what if he doesn't?"

"Then...I don't think he'll make it, Tony. He just doesn't have the strength."

"You know I ask you over to make me feel better?"

"I know. I'm just trying to be honest with you."

"You don't think Nat could-"

"She's not strong enough for this, Tony. Bruises and grazes when Victor was a child, that was fine. But not this...Though there might be someone who could."

"Who?"

"It's a terribly drastic measure, Tony. Not one you could be caught taking. Only someone who was truly desperate-"

"I  _am_  desperate! My son is  _dying_! Now tell me what in God's name you're talking about!"

"There's a witch in the woods."

"...That's cruel, Bruce. Raising my hopes to save him, and giving me this fairytale nonsense."

"Have I ever lied to you, Tony? I know there's a witch hiding in the woods. A young girl, dark hair, lives alone."

"And  _how_  do you know?"

"Nat. She senses her. She's trained, and powerful. She could help you."

"And you waited how long to tell me there's someone living in the woods who could ruin this town?"

"She's not  _dangerous_ , Tony! She's just capable of using magic, healing people,  _helping_  them. If you could've used magic to save Pepper, you would have. Wouldn't you?"

"...I suppose I would. And damn the consequences."

"Exactly. And isn't Victor as important to you as Pepper was?"

"You know he is, Bruce. He's like a son to me. Well...he  _is_  my son."

"So damn the consequences. Take him to her. It's a wooden bungalow somewhere deep in the woods, past the river. Magic can do what my medicine can't. It could heal him."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then you know you tried everything."

Footsteps, another cool cloth laid over Victor's forehead, and Tony's hand on his arm. "Do you think we can go on a walk tonight?" he asks, voice so soft and gentle, and Victor blinks at him with unfocused eyes. "It might help your chest to get outside, get some air."

"Where are we going?" Victor asks vaguely, drifting in his own mind, not noticing the sadness or the resignation on Tony's face.

"I thought the woods," Tony says gently. "You like the woods. The air will be clearer there. We can see the stars."

"The girl is in the woods," Victor says vaguely, then shoots upright, fear in his eyes. "She's in the woods, Tony. She was so  _scared_. We have to help her!" Adjusting the cloth over Victor's forehead, deafening himself to the continuous stream of, "We have to  _help_  her," Tony tries not to notice the bracelet wrapped around Victor's hand. Slender gold links holding a deep red stone, tangled around his trembling fingers. Something he's never seen before.

"We can look for her," Tony finally says, and thinks he sees some sort of life spark back into Victor's face. Interest in his eyes. "But you have to stand up, Victor. So we can walk."

Something motivates Victor to move, to slowly stand up, almost too weak to hold his own weight. His fever is high, his eyes glazed will illness, his breath coming in rattling rasps, but somehow he still stands, lets Tony coax him out of their back door and into the night. The stars are gleaming bright and burnished high above them, whispers behind the dark curtains, the wind picking up in a howl when Victor stumbles. He seems to flicker in the darkness, fading in and out of existence, so pale he seems grey in the gloom. Only Tony's hand on his shoulder keeps him anchored to the world, the soothing softness of his voice when he bends double, coughing up flecks of blood into the ashen palm of his hand.

The woods meet over their heads, a roof made of dense dark leaves, the river chattering in the dark, water pushing past pebbles, the grass brushing over the ankles of the two men, Victor barely able to stand now, the balmy night seeming to only make him cough worse. As the wooden bungalow comes into sight, a light glowing softly in one window, the air seeming to crackle with a certain  _something_ , Victor collapses.

Gold gleams in the night from the bracelet still tangled tight around his fingers.

* * *

A noise in the darkness sets Wanda's teeth on edge, pulling her knife from beneath her pillow and concealing it in the folds of her skirt, dimming her candles. Creeping from her bedroom into the main body of the house, still draped with Agatha's bolts of silk and velvet, the spines of ancient books shining with embossed lettering, leaning into what clients expect of a witch, she starts violently when a knock comes at the door, three sharp raps.

She raises her hand to her neck, clasps the smooth shape of her locket desperately, and waits. If she is silent and still, whoever is at her door will assume she abandoned the house a long time ago. She just has to have patience, wait for them to give up and leave. But they knock again, and this time there's a voice, calling out, "Excuse me? I was told there was somewhere here who could offer me help." A long sigh, and, "Please, it's my son. He's taken dreadfully ill, he's sick...unconscious. If you won't help me, I lose him."

Cracking her door open, enough for the shadows to pull at the corners of her home, creeping into her world, she looks out at the man she recognises, knows by reputation. Silver scattered through his dark hair, suffering in his eyes, and he looks at her with a plea in his eyes. "I need your help," he says, and looks at her, long and hard. "You are the witch in the woods, aren't you?"

"How do you know about me?" she asks, clutching her knife a little tighter.

"Another customer of yours," he says, and pushes her door further open, her knuckles white around the hilt of her knife and terror swarming in her chest. But he doesn't move to attack her, there's no knife or torch in his hands, or that terrible familiar gleam in his eyes. He's just holding another man, keeping him upright, and when she glances at the second stranger his eyes are closed, his brow gleaming with sweat, and his skin eerily pale.

"I don't run this business anymore," she says, glancing at the man. Young, blonde, taller than the one holding him up. And her chest catches when she looks down and sees her bracelet tangled around his fingers, the familiar red stone shining softly.

" _Please_ ," the man says, and he sounds so desperate that memory seems to echo down the years, Wanda remembering herself holding Pietro, pleading for him to be saved. "Look, my name is Anthony. I'm not here to hurt you or to tell people who you are and how to find you. I just heard that you would be able to help my son when the town doctor can't."

"Inside," she says, and swings the door all the way open to let the two men inside. Anthony looks around the room with wide eyes, and she gestures to the rug spread over the floor for him to lie his son down, gazing down at this stranger. So pale, so still, and holding her bracelet. "What's his name?"

"Victor," Anthony says, and he looks down at his son with so much sadness in his eyes that her heart breaks for him. "He just turned twenty-three. I don't know if that matters, I don't-"

"Anything you can tell me is helpful," she says, and he nods, and she can see the fear in his eyes. Fear of her, of the danger so any people see in her magic, even when it's nothing more than potions stacked in vials against the walls. "What happened?"

"He just came home one night soaked through, said he'd fallen in the river, and for a few days he was fine," Anthony says, clutching his hands together, looking down at his son like he's already lost him. A look Wanda understands, tugging on her heartstrings. "Then he started coughing up blood, and within a few days he had a fever and he wouldn't eat, he wasn't sleeping, he'd just lie there and ramble about some girl in the woods who was afraid. He was delirious, and the doctor said I just had to let him sweat it out, but that's not working."

Kneeling down next to Victor, smoothing a hand over his forehead, she finds him clammy with sweat, but cool to the touch. Looking at him, a chill runs through her when she sees that he's not breathing. She looks up, but Anthony looks so miserable that she can't tell him that his son is most likely beyond helping. "Where did he get this?" she asks, taking the bracelet from his hands and running her fingers over the familiar stone, the dip in its surface where she threw it against a rock in a fit of rage one night.

"Came home with it after he fell in the river," Anthony says, and there's suddenly tears in his eyes, and she has no idea how to respond. "I  _told_  him not to go into the woods! I told him it was dangerous, but he liked it because he always felt like an outsider, I knew that! I should've followed him, made sure he was alright...maybe if I'd called the doctor the first night he came home, he would never have gotten so  _ill_."

"It wasn't your fault," Wanda says, and Anthony looks at her with hollow eyes. "It was an unfortunate coincidence." Putting a hand to Victor's wrist, she finds no pulse beating beneath his skin, and bows her head. Clutching at the chain of her locket, just for an anchor, she begins to say, "But I have to tell you..." but trails away. Tracing her fingertips over the pattern on the surface of her locket, thinking of the spell written out across the scrap of paper still folded up tightly inside. "There  _is_  something I could try."

"What is it?" Anthony asks, and glances around the room, the candles burning low and the gleam of potion vials. "Do you have something that will reverse this illness?"

"I can cure him," she says, trying to project more confidence into her voice than she truly feels. "But it's a complicated ritual, and I haven't done it...very often. Not with an illness this severe. So while I perform this spell, I need you to wait outside."

"But he's my  _son_ ," Anthony says, glancing desperately down at Victor. "I want to stay with him. What if something goes wrong and he's alone when...when he..." He trails off, like the word is too terrible to say, and she just looks up at him.

"Were you allowed in the room while your wife lost her life in childbirth, Mr. Stark?" she asks, immediately regretting being so scathing when she sees agony flash through his eyes. "You want me to do for your son what a doctor cannot. Doctors would never allow you to be in the room in a healing like this, and I can't either."

He stares at her for a second, a challenge in the set of his jaw, but the spark in his eyes dims and he says, "Alright. Alright, I'll step out. But if...if something goes wrong...will you tell me immediately?" He glances down at Victor, Wanda biting her lip watching him seem to not notice - or deny - that the young man has already passed away. "I want the chance to say goodbye."

"If it goes wrong, I'll tell you," she says, and he finally leaves her in the silence. The door clicking closed behind him, and she unclasps the locket and forces it open, prising the scrap of paper out of it and smoothing it carefully out to read the spell.

Her knife gleams wickedly in the candlelight as she reads the list of ingredients, snatching herbs from their parcels and dropping them into a pot, working quickly and silently, trying to stop herself gazing at the dead man lying pale on her floor. Yet she can't help but let out a quiet hiss of pain when she slashes the knife across her palm to wet the collection of herbs with her own blood, and takes his hand to repeat the motion on his. Snatching a bottle of deep blue potion from the shelf, she drips it onto his palm then hers, matching silvery scars slashing across their skin as the shallow wounds heal.

Crushing the herbs into scraps, the blood gleaming so dark it's almost black in the pot, she begins to chant what's written on the paper, in an ancient language she's never known but falls from her lips as easily as English. The room shakes, and glowing red magic laces around her fingers, creeping up her arms in spirals, climbing beneath her skin, into her blood and bones. A part of her.

Something ancient grips her, fills her mind with blinding crimson light, makes her burn and her body shake though her hands are steady, and her gaze magnetised to the man on her floor. His ashen skin, the slender veins that criss-cross his eyelids, his pale hair clinging to his forehead, his simple clothes and his hand still curved loosely, waiting for someone to take it.

When she presses the tip of her finger to his wrist, over where his pulse should be beating, the light is blinding and she is caught in stasis, a silent scream pouring from her lips, and the ancient thing that grips her seems to shake itself in satisfaction. Settling in her chest forever.

Chaos, poured through the bones and blood of a young girl.

* * *

He knows he's dead. He knows that the illness took him, pushed his fever high until he couldn't see anything but shadow, that no matter how hard Tony wished him healthy he was too weak to fight what had a grip on him. So it doesn't make sense that he can see red.

Red like blood, like love, like chaos. A red that glows brighter than the sun, and it's forcing its way into him, and his eyes fly open to a girl in the room with him. She is all red, dark hair flying in a wind he can't feel, her skin so pale, and red tangled around her arms and legs, her eyes glowing, and she is so beautiful that he  _aches_ , looking on something so wonderful. He must be looking on an angel. Someone so beautiful simply cannot be human. "If this is hell," he says softly, and the angel looks at him, with some kind of softness in her face, "take my soul."

Velvet blackness swallows him again, and when he wakes again it's violently, jerking upright with a desperate gasp for air, and the angel is kneeling over him. She's no longer glowing, but she's luminously pale, and her eyes are a shade of green like precious jewels, and when she smiles his heart loses its rhythm. "You're awake," she says, and almost sounds surprised. Her accent is sharp, thick, shaping her words, and he finds himself watching the movement of her lips. "That's good. Drink this." A vial of something dark and deep, and he swallows it, the taste bitter and she laughs softly when his face screws up in disgust.

"Where am I?" he asks, looking around wildly at wooden walls lined with glowing vials, surfaces draped in velvet and silk, and so many candles like captured stars.

"This is my house, my workshop," she says, and he's struck by the colour of her dress, a deep red, and the cut, matching her curves and drawing the eye. "Your father brought you here for my help to cure your illness. By some miracle, you're going to be alright."

"You healed me?" he asks, and blinks at her in amazement. "You're an  _angel_."

"I wondered why you told me to take your soul," she says with a gentle laugh, a sound he wants to hear over and over again until his last breath. "Just a vision." She smiles at him, and asks, "How do you feel, my Vision?"

"I'm...not sure," he says, still sitting on the ground, the flickering flames of candles blurring into waves of orange-yellow-blue around him. "What did you do?"

"Just a spell, a few herbs, and some prayer," she says sweetly, and he's lost in the pleasant melody of her voice, gazing at the way her dress sways with her as she moves around him, one with the strange magical energy of the room. "You might still feel odd for a few days. It's not natural, for an illness so strong to leave your body all at once."

"You healed me completely?" he asks in amazement, gazing up at her bright-eyed, and she looks down at him and nods. "How do you  _do_ that?"

"Magic," she says simply, and gives him another smile that makes his heart skip. "I'll give you a few solutions to take home with you, and you have to take them as I tell you to. They'll carry you through the next few days while your body adjusts to being healthy again."

Watching her stretching for the empty vials, stacked in glittering piles on a high shelf, seeing her balancing on her tiptoes and threatening to fall in the attempt, he instinctively goes to stand to help, saying, "Let me get those for you, ma'am." But the moment he stands, his vision shimmers and shadows, and the next moment she's darted across the room to catch him, and he's gazing into her concerned eyes.

"Be gentle with yourself," she says softly, and he wants her to never let go. Stand close to him forever, with her shining eyes and her gentle smile and her fingers warm on his skin.

"Who are you?" he asks, searching her face for an answer, and she releases him, letting him steady himself until he can sit down, watching her leaning over a pot, steam rising to colour her cheeks.

"I'm Wanda," she says, adding a sprig of something to the solution and stirring. "You're Vision."

"Victor," he corrects. "I'm Victor Shade."

"I like Vision better," she says, and turns to give him a smile of such devastating sweetness that his heart cries out to her. "It suits you."

He gazes at her for in the suspended silence, transfixed by her every movement. She moves so fluidly, graceful, something not quite human about her. More than human. The people in town don't glow the way she does, he's never seen someone with eyes such a vivid shade of green, she simply can't be human. She seems to have fallen straight out of a story into his life, with her shining sheet of dark hair and the pink petals in her cheeks that draw the eye, and despite himself he glances at her mouth, wonders on the apparent softness of her lips, and feels the flush creeping warm up his neck, swallowing thickly and trying to return his thoughts to something sensible.

"I'm giving you seven bottles of this," she says, bringing him out of his daydreams, finding himself watching her slender fingers wrapping vials in bolts of velvet to protect them. "One bottle a day, each day for a week. That should be enough time to ensure your body has fully healed and you're as strong as you were before you took ill."

"Thank you," he says, and his voice sounds strange all of a sudden. Thick, and deep, and when she glances back at him he straightens up, pushing his shoulders back and drawing himself up to his full height. He's not sure why he does it, but he is sure that her gaze lingers on him and her cheeks glow a slightly brighter shade of pink. "You...you didn't have to heal me, you know."

"Of course I did," she says, and he's lost in her again when she turns to face him, in her shining eyes and soft smile. Like the heroine of some mystery, magic and intrigue a mist in her expression, and he aches to know her better. "What's the point of learning magic if I don't use it to help people?"

"But how does it work?" he asks, remembering the red that lit up the room, shining in her eyes and spiralling around her arms.

"It's just potions and herbs," she says, a little too quickly. Like she's lying.

"What about the red?" he presses, and she glances away. "Oh, you...you don't have to tell me. I'm just curious. I've never met a  _witch_."

"It's just a side effect," she says, and hands him the other vials, brushing a scrap of herb from her skirt. "I should fetch your father."

Shame settles hot at the back of his neck to think that he forgot about Tony, and she crosses the room and opens the door for Tony to almost knock her aside running at Victor, throwing his arms around him. "I thought I was going to lose you," he says, voice thick and tremulous with suppressed emotion, the way Victor has never heard him speak except in rare conversations about his late wife. When Tony releases him, he looks up at Wanda with tears in his eyes. "Thank you."

"You're welcome, Mr. Stark," Wanda says, and glances at Victor, something around her mouth softening. "You look after him. No more falling in rivers, Vision."

"Oh, I..." Victor lifts his hand, finding the bracelet still tangled around his hand, and takes Wanda's hand to press her fingers around it. "I-I think this is yours." Her skin is cool against his, soft, and something like a spark seems to jump between their fingers at the lightest touch, and when their eyes meet he feels something undeniably powerful.

"Thank you," she says softly, and he has to drag his gaze away.

"I should pay you," Tony says, and she shakes her head. "It's the least I can do when you've done this for me."

"No charge," she says, and Victor tries not to think that she keeps glancing at him. "Being able to help people like you is the only reason I still practice magic." She adjusts her skirt, smooths a hand through her hair and says, "Goodbye, Mr. Stark."

"God be with you," Tony says, and Victor thinks he thinks a shadow of something like sadness darken Wanda's face. "Come on, Victor, let's get you home. Bruce will want to see you healthy again."

"Goodbye, Vision," Wanda says, her voice so soft and sweet, and he turns back in the doorway to look at her, the candles surrounding her and his heart calling out her name.

"Thank you, Wanda," he says, because he will not let this be goodbye. In an instant, his life has become something like a story.

* * *

Despite his return to full health, shocking those close enough to Tony to know that he was walking the darkened path to death, Victor is undeniably different once returning from the depths of the woods. He finds himself losing hours to daydreams, sat cross-legged on his bed intending to read another yellowing novel or look through a report on one of the cases Tony has handled in preparation for the distant day he'll ascend to his adoptive father's position, but unable to concentrate. His mind constantly strays from the ordinary rhythms of life, back the tangled branches and the quiet rush of the river.

Sleep eludes him, and though Tony sternly tells him he should rebuild his strength with richer food, bigger portions, he can only pick at the meals. He ends his courtship of the butcher's daughter, unable to see ahead to any sort of future with her. Gently concerned, Tony tries to encourage him to look at one of the many other women of marriageable age, whose parents are appearing at their door with effusive smiles and hope in their eyes for betrothing their daughters to the judge's apprentice, but Victor looks at them and can't feel anything, not a single skipped beat in his heart.

The baker's daughter, though pretty, has brown eyes beneath her dark hair, and her skin is dusted with freckles, not flawless and moon-pale. Green eyes shine in a farmer's daughter's pale face, her cheeks bashfully pink when her mother nudges her forward, but her hair is blonde. Women have slender fingers, pale skin, gentle smiles, but none of them have the same vividly green eyes as Wanda, the same spill of dark hair, and they all wear black.

He can never forget that he only lives because of the generosity of a witch, a girl with frightened eyes but a smile for him. When he tries to sleep, he remembers her fingers clasping over his arm, the way the world seemed to stop turning when she looked into his eyes, time pausing over the moment and allowing them to lose the moments looking at each other. Tony may not have parted with any money for him, but Victor is sure that he parted with something. How else can he explain his sleeplessness, his lack of appetite, his inability to feel anything for the pretty young women being paraded before him?

Wanda took something from him. From the moment he opened his eyes and saw her, encased in that mysterious red, a shining beacon of mystery, as beautiful as any angel he could imagine, perhaps moreso, he was lost. He's never known anything like this before, even in the stories, and he wonders how anyone could possibly feel so strongly and keep it a secret. If this is how finding someone in the world always feels, like he's been torn in two, half of him handed to Wanda, her hands cupped around the flame of his heart, taking him for her own.

There are rules and regulations around love, the process of courting, everything constructed to be sure that love is true. But when he's alone in the dark, staring into shadows and unable to drag his thoughts away from Wanda, he thinks that the rules are ridiculous, a farce meant to make it difficult. If he thinks long and hard enough, he can tell himself that what he feels is love. He can't imagine there is anything else that would have changed his world so completely except falling for Wanda, for the frightened look in her beautiful eyes and the gentle curve of her smile.

And therein lies the crisis that he doesn't know what to do. He may think to himself that she is perfect, everything he has ever hoped to find, but he has no idea how to express that. How to even go to her again. If only he hadn't given her bracelet back, that would provide the perfect excuse to return to the woods and find the little wooden house. But instead he is left to his own thoughts, spiralling deeper and deeper into utter surety that he has fallen into something close to love with her, and with no idea of what to do.

The siren call of the woods beckons him every time he leaves the house, testing the new strength of his body each day, after the vials Wanda sent him away with are all empty and he feels the man he was before illness gripped him. And yet different. He could never be the same after that experience, after meeting her, she changed something fundamental about him, moulded him into a new shape, with that new name and the magical way she looked at him. In a single night, she has brought him into a new world, a world where all he sees is her. She has taken him and weaved herself into the strands of his mind, and he can't help but be happily haunted by her.

He gives in after a little over two weeks, unable to help the way the trees beckon him, drawing him in with the pull of their slender branches. There are no paths in the woods, but his feet carry him with purpose, and when the whisper of the river grows louder he knows he's following the correct path. His heart guides him, drawing him through the dense trees until he sees the house in the sunlight, and pauses when he sees  _her_.

She's wearing the same red dress, her hair pulled back by a black ribbon, scattering handfuls of feed to the chickens pecking the ground around her feet, and she's still glowing. He has since wondered if she only seemed so beautiful because he was delirious with coming down from that terrible fever, but looking on in the sunlight he's never seen anything more stunning. The girl who fell into his life, found her way into his mind, stuck there, and he can't resist the pull of her.

His foot lands on a twig that snaps sharply beneath his weight, and she shoots upright, her gaze darting wildly around the trees surrounding her. "Who's there?!" she calls out, and he steps into the sunlight, and sees her tense up further, her eyes darting away from him and a clench in her jaw. "Are you lost, my Vision? Didn't I tell you to stay away from the river?"

"I...I just wanted..." The words stick in his throat like class, caught in the cage of his chest, so much surrounding them that he can't articulate the way he feels, and finishes with a pathetic, "I wanted to see you."

"You've seen me," she says, scattering another handful of feed. "You shouldn't wander in the woods alone, Vision. Haven't you heard the stories that people who wander can never go back?"

"Those are just superstition," he says blithely.

"The woods twist you, Vision," she says softly, and when he looks at her there is a kind of sadness in her eyes that makes him ache to comfort her. "Men go mad in here, lose their minds and become just shadows of their former selves. Terrible people hide out here in the shadows."

"I'm not afraid of shadows," he says, bold and brave and everything he knows the heroes of novels should be. The heroes that heroines like Wanda fall in love with, just part of the puzzle of a story. And this has to be the way to make her see him as so much more than just another person she helped with her magic.

But she looks up at him with darkness misting her face, no softness in her expression. "You should be."

"Wanda, I...I think I might have left something here," he says, a hopeful grab to spend more time with her. "If I could just come inside to look-"

"You didn't leave anything, Vision," she says. "And neither did your father." She backs away from him, back towards her home. "If you know what's good for you, you'll stay away from this place and from me."

"Wanda, wait!" he calls out, desperation weaving its way into his words, and she turns back, an eyebrow arched at him. "I...I haven't stopped thinking about you these past two weeks. And I...I think that you feel it too. I don't understand this, but it  _can't_  just be me."

"Vision, stay away from here," she says, but he can see a conflict in her eyes, and he clings to it. The slightest spark of hope. "Stop thinking about me. You can't... _I_  can't. Do you understand?"

"I don't," he says, and she just looks away from him. "Wanda...just explain to me. Please. I can't sleep for thinking of you, I had to see you, I believe that this is not something that will simply stop."

"Of course it won't," she says. "But you have to leave, and stay away. I don't know what you imagine might happen, but whatever you're dreaming of cannot be. I'm sorry."

"But...Wanda...you must know I've never known anything like this," he says, and she looks up at him, her eyes wide and wet. "Why are you crying?"

"Just leave," she says, breath hitching over the words, and ducks into her house, slamming the door behind her.

* * *

Since she became Agatha's apprentice, Wanda has only known misery. Taken advantage of, used as a bargaining chip in transactions between her mistress and the men who walked into the woods in search of a solution to their problems, lied to and turned into someone she barely recognises. Every day she wonders what happened to the girl from Sokovia, who loved her family more than anything and dreamed of a quiet life with a man who would love her completely. That girl died the day Pietro did, leaving only shadows behind, a broken heart that stubbornly beats on.

Her sadness has become so ingrained into her being that a spark of happiness is enough to terrify her, feeling like it doesn't fit into her life. She is meant to be miserable, wander the house alone and silent, wait for the day that death appears at her door and she can go gratefully to the velvet blackness and be with her family again. But thinking of Vision makes her happy, a spark of lightness shattering her shadows. And she can't feel that way. He is someone she can't have, and she can't let him get close to her. People who are close to her have a terrible tendency to end up dead.

But he won't stay away despite her warning. Within just a few days, there's a knock at her door, and her heart lifts when he's standing outside, blinking shyly at her. "I know you told me that I should stay away," he says, and she just keeps her hand on the door handle, looking up at him, his eyes bluer than any she's ever seen before. "But I just can't, Wanda, I'm sorry, I  _can't_." Bringing a hand from behind his back, he nervously holds out a small bouquet of slightly crushed daisies. "I just wanted to bring these. Your house just needs some flowers, I think."

"You shouldn't be here," she says, and his face falls, and it hurts to see the light in his eyes dim. She can't feel like this, she's too hollow and damaged for anyone to want her, he deserves so much better than what she can give him. Her life will lead her away from this town, and she has to forget him. It can't be like this. "You need to stay away from me."

"I  _can't_ ," he insists, and his eyes are bright and honest and he's looking at her so intensely, she just wants to fall into his arms and welcome whatever he wants to give her. But she can't, and steps back, pulling the door towards her to shut him out, make him understand that he is worth more than her.

"I don't want you here," she says shortly, and his hand is shooting up to catch the door before she can close it.

"Please don't lie," he says softly, and takes a step closer to her, taller and wider than her, cloaking her in his shadow, and it's like every other man, towering over her, prepared to do terrible things to her. "Wanda-"

"Get  _away_  from me!" she snaps, voice pitched high with fear, and he looks distraught when she backs away, further into the house, trembling. "Please just leave."

"But you're frightened," he says, and he's so soft-spoken, pausing in the doorway, the flowers still clutched tightly in his hand. "What can I do?"

"I can take care of myself," she snaps, flicking a speck of lint from her skirt and trying to calm her racing heart. No one is going to hurt her. If this man tries to harm her, there's a knife close by. She doesn't have to just let people hurt her anymore.

"I want to help," he says, and steps into the house, looking around the room. "Can I help you?"

"You don't even  _know_  me," she says, curling her arms around herself protectively, just to stop her heart from beating faster, trying to escape her bones and give itself to this sweet man who keeps looking at her with something terrifying yet intoxicating in his eyes.

"I would like to," he says softly, approaching her cautiously now, searching her face for any sign of fright. "Please just let me help you." Her breath is shortening, her heart racing, her head spinning, and he looks so scared. "What's happening to you?"

"I just need to be alone," she gasps between shallow breaths, clutching a hand to her chest where pain is sharpening.

"I don't think that's wise," he says softly, and approaches her carefully, setting the tiny bunch of flowers aside, and he's so touchingly concerned that sadness swarms in her chest, struggling to remember the last time someone looked at her with anything close to that level of concern. "Maybe you should sit down?"

Her joints seem to have locked in fear, making it impossible for her to move, but he helps her. Selflessly, and gently, looking at her so openly that she has to look away, afraid of what she sees in the depths of his eyes. Brings a chair towards her and helps her sit down, kneels on the floor to keep himself smaller, watches her as her breathing steadies and the painful tightness in her chest eases. "What are you doing here?" she asks, turning to him, and a slight flush steals into his cheeks.

"I just wanted to see you," he says softly, hope brightening his eyes. "I know that I am perhaps overstepping a boundary, but I just can't help myself. Since the very first moment I saw you, I haven't been able to stop thinking of you."

"Two weeks, that doesn't mean anything," she says defiantly, pushing this away, denying what he seems to want this unspoken thing to become. It's too dangerous, it's everything she ever wanted, and everything she now can't have. Someone as damaged as her simply isn't worthy of happiness.

"Two years," he says softly, and her heart drops. "I was with a woman and you bumped into me on the street. I remember you perfectly, how I tried to help pick up everything you dropped, how your eyes were so frightened. You haunted me every night for months."

She remembers the day, the way the blue of his eyes lingered in her mind rushing home, terrified that he would be following, would discover the secrets of the woods. Terror has been a part of her for so long, making her shy away from anything unfamiliar, try to push it away, and when she sees this man who isn't afraid of her, with such a generous, open expression, she wishes she could run deep into the shadows and never return. "I'm sorry," she says softly, and truly is, truly hates watching Vision's sweet face fall in disappointment. "But you have no idea who I am. Whoever you imagine me to be, it couldn't be further from the truth. I can't be the girl you think I am."

"Can't I speak for myself on who I think you are?" he asks, and she finds herself helplessly looking into his eyes, as blue as summer skies arching over the golden fields of the farm back in Sokovia, long before the crops failed and her parents chose to run, a time when she was content and happy and naive. "I think that you are beautiful, and intriguing, and you always look so frightened that it concerns me. I don't know you, but I would like to."

Tears mist her eyes, hot and prickling, and she looks away, smoothing her fingers along her skirts. "You should leave," she says. "You don't want to know me. Just...just go back to your life, follow the path set out for you, and forget about me."

"I could never forget you," he says, soft and sincere, and she turns away from him, frantically pressing her lips together to try and keep from crying. "Why are you so afraid?"

"You have no idea what I've been through," she says softly, refusing to look at him. "If you knew, you would walk away and never turn back. I need you to leave before I do something stupid."

"What are you going to do?" he asks, and he's moved closer, his hand cupped loosely over the arm of her chair, and she wants to slide her fingers between his. Let him hold her.

"I can't say," she says, and a tear slips down her cheek. He makes a quiet sound of concern at the back of his throat, and moves closer to her, holding out a crisp white handkerchief. "I...I can only tell you that my life has been one tragedy after another. And you shouldn't want me/"

"Isn't that my decision?" he asks, and she looks down to his eyes, and for one dizzying moment she thinks he might kiss her. Press his lips to hers, and she would finally know what it is to be kissed, for someone to treat her with any sort of tenderness. But she can't drag this gentle, kind boy down into her shadows, and turns away from him.

"Please go," she says, and he stands, walking away from her, and there's a crying out in her hollowness that forces her to say, "But...but if you were to come back, perhaps we can be friends? This...this is a lonely place to be."

He smiles, and he looks so handsome, his eyes bright, that she has to look away before she does something instinctive and stupid. "I'd like that, Wanda," he says, and she finds herself committing the way he says her name to memory. "I would like to know more about you. Everything."

"You truly wouldn't," she says, and he just gazes at her, an intensity in his eyes that makes her heart skip a beat.

"I would."

* * *

Vision. It's not a name, nothing normal like everyone who surrounds him in the town has, even the affectionate nicknames between close friends aren't like this. Tony is a nickname, used only by himself, Bruce and his wife, and Tony is the only person in the world who ever called his late wife Pepper. And Wanda is the only one who calls him Vision. Yet it has become a part of him. A name he calls himself, forever remembering the way a soft smile lingers on her lips when she calls him that, her eyes warm.

As time passes, summer fading into autumn, he's spending more and more time in the woods, shirking other responsibilities to be near her. The trees are losing their leaves, becoming skeletons, and it becomes too cold for them to be outside too long, Wanda always shivering in her thin clothes, so slender and fragile that he aches to hold her. But she still insists on never being too close to him, and he follows her wishes. He would rather be only her friend than be cut from her life completely.

Her life fascinates him. She lives in such solitude, but as time passes the silks in the house change, moving from black to brighter colours, the candles burning warm to chase away the oncoming press of winter, and it's as if her soul has seeped into the tiny wooden bungalow. He watches her create potions meant to help people, heal bruises and stitch cuts back together and fade scars, and some meant to soothe emotional distress. Steam curls upwards from her pot, and he learns the names of the herbs she uses, sometime sits next to her and helps her crush them with the flat of her knife, transfixed by the way she works. The occasional tendrils of red that spark over her fingertips, or the flashes of crimson in her eyes. Her magic.

In the depths of winter, when the cold stops him from being so easily able to sneak away into the woods, he misses her so much it's a constant ache in his chest. He feels heavy with it, dreaming of the moments he can make her laugh and the way her eyes shine, and thinking of her occasional touches. A hand on his arm, or her leaning against him for the briefest second, and how his heartbeat thunders in his ears when she is close.

And these feelings can't be his alone. While Tony is with Bruce, celebrating another year of living, Vision sneaks away into the woods, and when Wanda opens the door to him she smiles so widely, dimpling her flushed cheeks. "I thought you'd never come back," she says, and he shakes his head.

"Of course I did," he says, gazing down into her eyes, the colour of them striking every time. "I missed you." And he pulls the basket he hid behind his back into her eyeline, and smiles. "I thought we could have a meal together. And I brought more ribbon for your hair."

She looks up at him, and there's a threatening gleam in her eyes. And he almost drops the basket when she throws her arms around his middle, pressing her face into his chest, and he rests a nervous hand on the back of her head, her hair impossibly soft beneath his fingers. "Thank you," she says when she pulls away, and smiles up at him. "I have to go search for a few herbs. Do you want to help?"

"I'd like that," he says, and follows her deeper into the woods, dim with winter even at midday, watching her crouching over plants that all seem the same to him, inspecting leaves cautiously. In an attempt to help, he mimics the way she pushes the frost aside to peer closer.

When he reaches for something with oddly-shaped leaves, glowing red wraps around his hand and jerks it back, and he turns to her in amazement. "Don't touch that," she says. "It's poisonous."

"How did you  _do_  that?" he asks in amazement, and suddenly she closes off. Afraid.

"Just magic," she says dully.

"I thought your magic was all potions and herbs," he says. "Is there something different? Is it why your eyes turn red sometimes when you're making potions?" She looks away from him, and he softens his voice, looking at the doubt in her eyes, the tumble of her dark hair and reaches for her hand. Hers is so small in his, her fingers cold from the chill of the air, but she doesn't try to move away. "Wanda, you don't have to be afraid with me. You can be honest."

"Not about this," she says, and yet she still doesn't snatch her hand from his. "I...if you know this, Vision, you'll run from me. And I...I can't lose you."

"I would never run from you," he says softly, and tears spill suddenly down her cheeks. "Wanda? Please don't cry."

"Why do you make promises like that?" she asks, blinking her wet eyes at him. "How can you say you'll never run from me?"

"I couldn't," he says, and holds her hand a little tighter. "Wanda, I...what I feel for you is beyond anything I ever could have imagined. It's irresistible. If I tried to run from you, I would only find myself back at your door a few days later. Losing you would take the light from my life."

"I don't bring light to your life," she says, and ducks her head. "You shouldn't  _be_  alive at all."

"What do you mean?" he asks, though he knows it in his heart. She looks up at him, tears spilling down her face, and turns their hands over, matching scars lashing across their palms, silvery and never healed.

"You died," she says. "Your father brought you to my door and you were already dead. But I couldn't bear to tell him. And there was a spell to help, forbidden magic my mentor told me of before her death, and I saw how desperate your father was for you to live. So I performed the spell, I mixed our blood and used the right herbs and spoke ancient incantations over the pot and I opened myself to something ancient."

"I'm glad you did it," he says softly, and she looks away. "I couldn't bear for Tony to be alone. And I couldn't bear to never have known you. You  _saved_  me, Wanda."

"There's something inside me, Vision," she says, and as she speaks she glows. Her eyes are crimson and bright, the veins on her arms blaze red, and he's transfixed by her, by the angel he first saw. "I feel it. It's a part of me."

"You don't frighten me," he says, moving closer to her, and she shakes her head, her glowing eyes filled with tears.

"I  _should_ ," she insists. "I killed my own  _brother_. He...we were arguing, and I pushed him, and he hit a rock. He died in my arms. I've never...I still see his blood staining my hands."

He cradles her hands in his, looking into her eyes. "That was an accident, I know it. I watched my mother die, but I know it wasn't my fault. Tony blames himself for Pepper dying in childbirth, but it wasn't his fault. Tragedies are terrible, but they do not define who you are, Wanda."

"You don't  _understand_!" she exclaims, broken by a sob. "Everything I have done since I came to this country has hurt people. And if you don't leave, you'll be hurt too. I shouldn't have brought you back, I don't know what kind of life I've condemned you to, the spell is forbidden, you shouldn't trust me, you should be running away!"

"I'm not afraid," he says softly, and against his better judgement he brings her hands to his lips, presses a gentle kiss to her fingertip. "You could never hurt me. I am eternally grateful that you saved my life, because it let me know you. Your magic is beautiful, Wanda, but that's not what I see. I just see  _you_."

She falls against him, crying, and when he holds her he feels how thin she is, her violent trembling, and hastens to get her back to the house, lighting the candles and trying to warm her up, calming her fragmented sobbing. Holding her so close, he feels his heart stirring, protective instinct surging up in her chest, aching to protect her from everything that could ever try to hurt her. He will not be torn from her. He will not let her push him away. He will protect her.

* * *

Winter melts into spring, and Wanda is never far from Vision's thoughts. Since she told him about her brother, in jagged, tear-stained pieces of the story, he's been overwhelmed by how open she has been within their friendship. Each time he sees her she leans on him freely, touches him, and he is so certain that she must feel the same jump in her heartbeat, the same spark skittering between their skin when their hands brush.

It's been close to a year since she saved him, breathed life back into his bones, and his feelings for her are unchanging. They only grow stronger with every moment they spend together, he finds himself idly kissing her fingers when they part, and she never tries to pull away. He has fallen in love with her, and he hopes that she has fallen in love with him too.

"Where are you going?" Tony asks pointedly as Vision tries to creep silently past his office, and he turns to face his adoptive father with the same prickling mixture of shame and defiance he would feel as a child when he was caught trying to take food he shouldn't.

"The woods," he says, seeing no point in lying, and Tony frowns at him. "I want to clear my head."

"Is that really why you're going?" Tony asks, and Vision can't help but raise his chin defiantly. "Or are you going to see that little witch?"

"Wanda is my friend," Vision says, and Tony arches an eyebrow at him. "I want to spend time with her."

"You spend too much time with her," Tony says. "You're nearly twenty-four, Vision, and you haven't courted anyone in close to a year."

"Perhaps I have," Vision says, thinking out loud, seeing the disappointment in Tony's eyes that hurts. But only a dull ache. Nothing like the way not seeing Wanda hurts him. "Tony, I believe that Wanda is a extraordinary woman. And I would hate myself if I ran away from my feelings for her."

"She's dangerous, Victor," Tony says, and it truly is jarring to hear his name, when he's grown so used to Wanda's nickname, in her soft voice, when she touches his arm and moves closer and he wants nothing more than to hold her. "All witches are. You can't trust them."

"She's not just a witch," Vision says, and Tony huffs, and he can't even conjure the words to describe her. Magical? Mysterious? Everything he has ever wanted and so much more? A girl from a story, somehow tumbled from pages and ink into the real world, to brighten up his dull life. "She's  _Wanda_."

"You should be more careful," Tony says, a warning painted through his words. "You've always had so much love to give, Victor. But you're too indiscriminate about who you give your heart to. Why not another woman? Anyone in this town would be delighted to see their daughter with you."

"No other woman is like Wanda," Vision says, and that is his final word before he leaves the house, despite Tony calling after him. Defying his father sends a thrill through him, walking through the crisp spring evening to the woods, admiring the pale bud of new leaves on the trees.

The sound of the river is welcome now, meaning he's close to Wanda, spending the evening content with her. But as he approaches, he hears thuds, and quickens his pace to find a cart outside her house, stacked high with her possessions, and as he watches she opens the door, heaving a collection of books onto the back of the cart. "Wanda?" he calls, and she startles at his voice, looking up at him. "What are you doing?"

"I'm leaving," she says, and his stomach drops, cold stealing over him. "I've already delayed too long."

"But...but...why?" he asks, sadness swelling in his chest.

"It's dangerous for witches to linger too long in the same place," she says. "Since Agatha died, I've been delaying this. It's more important for me to escape, before anyone realises I'm here and tries to hurt me."

"I've told no one, Wanda," he says. "And I never will. No one ever has to know you're here."

"It's more than that, Vision," she says, half a sigh. "I just can't stay."

"But what about me?" he asks, and crosses to her, catching her hand in his. "Wanda, I-"

"Don't," she says softly, pressing a finger to his lips. "Please don't say anything. It's already hard enough to leave you."

"Then don't leave," he says, and she looks down, and he sees the telltale gleam of tears in her eyes. "You don't have to, Wanda. Whatever Agatha told you...from what you've shared with me, I believe she was manipulative to the worst degree. I would never share your secret. You could be safe here for so much longer."

"If anyone finds me, your life will be ruined too," she says, and he watches helplessly as a tear spills down her cheek. "I gave you another chance. I can't take it away."

"I don't want this second chance if you aren't near me," he says, and clasps her hands in his, brings them to his chest to bring her closer, her step sure, like she's drawn to him. "You can't go."

"I have to," she says, and meets his eyes, and energy flickers between them. "You know I'll miss you."

"I'll go with you!" he exclaims in a sudden fit of inspiration. "I have training, I could find a job. A real house. I can help you."

"You can't," she says, blinking her tears away. "It has to be this way, Vision. I told you a thousand times to stay away from me. Now this only ends with you being hurt."

"Don't go," he says, looking down into her eyes, bending his head to kiss her fingers, feeling that her hands are trembling. "I live but half a life without you."

He kisses her. And he has kissed other women before, to end nights spent walking hand in hand through the town. But it has never been like this. Kiss seems too simple a word to describe how it feels to press his lips to Wanda's. He lets go of her hands to curve his hands around her waist, his eyes closed against the world that seeks to tear them apart, holding her so gently. She is the most precious thing in the world, made of glass and shadows and sadness, and she is so delicate in his arms. Trembling beneath his touch, her arms slowly reaching up to wrap around his neck, her hands smoothing his hair.

The world could end, and he would never know it. All he knows is her, her lips soft and warm against his, how he has to hold himself stooped over to continue kissing her, how he's been craving this touch since the moment he saw her bathed in red, and how his life seems to come together in this moment. He loves her, he has never been more certain of anything. His life is meant to be spent with her.

She pulls away first, ending the moment of bliss, and he opens his eyes to look at her, tear tracks shining on her cheeks, her cheeks pink, her breath coming in shallow bursts. "Why did you  _do_  that?" she asks.

"Please don't leave," he says softly. "Stay. Stay with me."

She kisses him again, and he wonders if that is her answer. But she pulls away too soon, before he has even had a chance to sink into her, and her eyes are wild and frightened. "Why do you want this?" she asks, desperation threaded through her words. "Why do you want  _me_?"

"I love you." He's never said that before. Never felt the way his mouth shapes the words he's always wanted to say, and he watches her, sees her eyes betray a spark of happiness through the fear. "I love you, Wanda. I want you in my life. I want to be with you. I don't care what has happened to you. I'm not afraid of you. I'm in love with you!"

"You  _can't_ ," she says, breath hitching over a sob. "You deserve so much better than me, Vision. You're so  _good_ , you're pure and naive and you think this is love, but it isn't. It can't be. You can't love someone broken like me."

"I do," he promises, and she starts to cry, muffling her sobs with a hand across her mouth. "I love you."

"You don't  _understand_!" she sobs. "No one has  _ever_  kissed me before, but everything beyond that has been done to me a hundred times. Agatha used me as a bartering tool, she let men do whatever they wanted to me to make sure they would be discreet. I've been used by dozens of men, you can't possibly want me. She twisted me, she destroyed me, she changed me against my will. I can  _never_  give you children, Vision. Your life will never be normal with me."

"I don't care about normal," he says, anger roiling in his gut to think of how many ways she's been abused, made to think that no one could ever care for her. "I love you. That is all that matters to me."

She blinks up at him, eyes bright with tears, and she's shaking, so frightened. "I love you too," she says, after the silence has lingered too long, in a muted voice. "Vision, I...why won't you let me push you away?"

"I love you," he says simply. "I believe you are my destiny, Wanda. I cannot question fate, and I would never want to." Giving her a soft smile, kissing her hand, he says, "Not when it brings me to you."

"You truly want me?" she asks softly, and he nods frantically. And she finally smiles, and he can relax. "I've loved you all this time, my Vision. When Agatha died, I...I was free. But I never felt it. Not until you."

"Then why did you try to push me away?" he asks, and she lowers her head. "I'm not angry, Wanda."

"I didn't want you to fall in love with me," she says, and looks up at him, tears in her eyes. "You deserve better. I'm just a broken wreck of a person."

"That's not what I see," he says softly. "I see someone who is strong, and brave, and powerful. I see how beautiful you are, even when all you're doing is living. I see the woman I would happily spend my life with."

"Come with me," she says softly, and takes his hand, tugging him through the trees. And he follows her, his heart singing, watching her hips sway with each step, so in love in the night, helpless to how she makes him feel. He would do anything just to stay with her like this, untouched by the outside world.

There's something wild in the whisper of the wind, the rush of the river, the shadows all around and the moon bright and full, a medal on the night sky. She is a brightness in the dark, the moonlight silvering her pale skin and trapping itself in her hair, a beautiful creature from another world glancing back at him with a silent promise in her smile. A careless freedom shining in her eyes, so green against the silhouettes of the wood, this place tied to him and tied to her, bringing them together.

Intricate patterns of light through the thick layers of leaves guide him to her, their eyes locking and their breath mingling in the quiet, her hand cold in his as he presses slow kisses to her fingers, her palm, all the places glowing red can lace across her skin, everywhere she could use to hurt him. But she never would, never  _could_. This strange and wonderful girl holds his heart in her magical hands, and when he holds her and whispers, "I love you," as the moonlight falls on their faces, she looks at him like he never thought someone could look at him. Something from a story.

She presses a kiss to his mouth, her lips warm despite the chill of the wind, and she tastes like magic, like mystery, like  _forever_. "I love you," she breathes against his skin, sweet and soft, and his fingers tangle in her hair, pull her in once more, intoxicated with her. The newness of bodies pressing together, her curves and her warmth fitting into the places where he's always felt empty, chasing away the shadows of years alone. A soft sound she lets out against his mouth, something he can't name but that sets a fire burning in him, clutching at her a little tighter.

Breaking the kiss, her eyes darkened by desire, she clasps his hand to her heart, letting him feel how fast it's beating, fluttering like frantic wings against his palm. "You are extraordinary," he says helplessly, and she kisses him, tangling her arms around his neck and pushing their bodies together, and he can feel how she trembles beneath his touch. "Is something wrong?"

"No," she says, and smiles at him, a hand cupped to his cheek, her face flushed and her eyes shining, joyfully beautiful in his arms. "It's  _right_." A tear in her eye, like a star, and a hitch in her breath when she rushes out, "I've never chosen before."

There are no words to tell her his feelings, his profound gratitude that she has chosen him of all the men in the world, only hands and lips to prove to her what's written in his heart. Only her hands in his hair, tugging their mouths closer, her body eager against his, the heady surge of desire that sets him spinning, the stars above seeming to grow brighter, watching them. The whisper of fabric as she lets him undress her, gazing at him unwaveringly, her hands moving to his clothes before she hesitates. "Do you want this?" she asks, her voice tremulous and husky with desire, sending a delicious shudder through him.

"You are everything I could ever want," he says, and presses his lips to hers in a brief kiss before she's tugging at his clothes, and they're on the ground, dry leaves scratching his back as he watches the moonlight play against her skin, turning her to silver, shining beneath his touch. Something like an angel, pale skin he aches to touch, the fire in him burning, flickering through his fingertips as he trails uncertain caresses over her skin, the jumps and hitches in her breath a silent signal to go on and on and on.

" _Vision_ ," she breathes out, like there's no other word in the world, the name she gave him, rewarded him with for a moment that connected them inevitably. Perhaps this was fated, this moment with the cold night air trying to push between them, a kind of magic that draws them closer, brings their mouths crashing together and sends passion flickering between them. Maybe they were always meant to find themselves together in the dark, fingers tangling together and each other's names on their lips.

A sin should not feel as good as it does to be close to her, to see her kiss-swollen shining lips part in wonder when he touches her, to have her hips move against his. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he thinks that no one can possibly know how it feels to be so consumed by someone's love, or there would be no insistence on waiting until the sanctity of marriage. He thinks that no one can ever have been in love the way he is with her. There's no guilt, no hot prickling at the back of his neck. He will make this woman his wife, spend a lifetime loving her, and there is nothing wrong with love.

There are stars reflected in her dark eyes as she throws her head back, the moonlight striping the graceful curve of her neck, his grip on her tightening at the moment they're joined, meeting each other hip to hip and heart to heart, all other sound drowned out by the rhythm of their breathing, the world disappearing around them. "I love you," he says in a breathless rush, gazing at the light on her face, and she smiles so sweetly that the world seems to glow.

"I love  _you_ ," she breathes, and his name falls from her lips like a prayer, so reverent. Everything he is is wrapped up in this wonderful woman, lost in her, coming unstitched in her hands. Falling in love with her was as easy as falling down a hill, it couldn't have been fought even if he'd tried. The green of her eyes pulled him in, and now she gazes down at him with wonder in her eyes. "What do you feel?" she asks, voice tremulous, and he twines their fingers together, a soft kiss pressed to the back of her hand.

"Only you," he breathes in worship, and the shift of her hips when she leans down to kiss him sets him alight, moving with her, perfectly matched. She is wild, and strange, and has shadows within her, and he has never felt the earth move the way he does when she is close to him. He thinks that no one could possibly understand love unless they've felt this, known what it is to be joined with another person, one with them, feel their heartbeats match and press frantic kisses to their lips, over and over. This is reckless, and brave, and dangerous, and he has never wanted anything more.

Her soft sounds grow louder and louder, unrestrained in the night, she whispers endearments in the language of her home country, moving faster and faster until she cries out and shatters like glass beneath his careful hands, shuddering and shuddering. He can't help but come apart too, losing everything he is to her for a moment, and when reality blurs back into focus she is crying, tears silvery trails on her cheeks, and he tries to wipe them away, pulling her gently down to cradle her to his chest, stroking her windswept, sweat-damp hair. "I never wanted to hurt you," he says, and she shakes her head, a smile surprising him.

"You could never hurt me," she says, an echo of his own words, and kisses him, quick and gentle. "I...I'm crying because it didn't hurt. I...I have  _never_  felt like that." A hand trails down his chest, tender, and she breathes, "I love you, Vision."

"And I love you, Wanda," he replies, the words so simple to say. Easy. Love was supposed to be complicated, dangerous, laced with rules and regulations. He broke every one of them, and yet telling Wanda he loves her is as natural as breathing. "You...you are  _wonderful_."

"You are magical," she says, rolling off him and lying beside him, her head on his chest, curled small and warm into his side. "The best kind of magic. I...falling in love with you was more magic than I learned every year I lived as a slave."

She's shaking, and he presses a soothing kiss to her forehead, holding her closer. "Never think of that again, Wanda," he says, and she turns her face into his shoulder as he recognises the ragged breath that signals tears. "Please don't cry. I want to see you happy."

"With you, I could be," she says, muffled into his shoulder, and looks up at him with softness in her eyes. "I  _am_." She moves away, moonlit and so beautiful he can hardly breathe, feeling so unworthy to look upon someone like her, and gives him a tempting smile. "Come into the river."

The water is cold on his naked body, a shock, but she curls herself around him and smiles, her hair streaming down her back, and he finds himself tracing his hands over her curves, mapping her out so reverently. "It's cold," he says, a thought spoken aloud that sounds so stupid against the magnitude of what they've shared, and she giggles, doubly so when he blushes.

"I used to come here almost every night," she says softly, looking around at the ripples they've created, blossoming between the banks. "I...I would sit here and just look into the water. And...and sometimes I would just swim. And I wouldn't undress. I...I would put my head beneath the surface, and I would just float. And there were nights when I truly considered not coming back up."

There are tears in her eyes, and he lifts her chin to kiss her, wishing he could do more to heal her, to make her forget the tragedies that make up her past. "I'm glad you can tell me," he says gently, and smudges a tear away with his thumb. "And I am so grateful that you found the strength to live on."

"I never knew what compelled me to never see it through," she says, and looks up at him with so much love in her eyes that he's overwhelmed by it, hardly able to breathe. "Now I do. I believe fate was saving me for you. So I could understand how much someone could love me." Tears spill down her cheeks, burnished trails on her pale skin, and she softly says, "You were the strength I had through every tragedy, and I didn't even know you yet."

He clutches her closer and puts all his force behind the words as he says, "I promise, you will never face such tragedy again. Your past may be tragic, but your future will be as bright as I can make it." At the look she gives him, almost unreadable, he amends, "If a future with me is what you want."

"I had no future before you," she says. "Not one I would want to face." Lifting her head and kissing him, she breathes, "You gave me a life to hope for," and smiles. And he is wholly hers, a promise in the tangle of their hands and the kiss that lingers on in the dark.


End file.
